Loving yourself

Post Reply New Topic

To what degree is it possible to love yourself exclusively through mental processes as opposed to successful actions?

Can you be convinced about your own self-worth without proving it through successful actions?



I have some idea that you can. But at the same time I don't think you can be that convinced about it without some actual actions to back it up.

I think it's true that you shouldn't have to prove yourself to be lovable. But is this realistic in practice?

For me, self-love is about being the very best I can be, and accepting myself for it. This means that I must act as best I can while not worrying about the rest. I think this is critically important since we can't expect others to accept us for who we are if we can't accept ourselves for who we are.

For my own self I feel worthless unless I'm accomplishing something.

Sitting around watching TV, occupying a park bench or lying on the beach doesn't do it for me.

I have to be busy writing music, writing fiction, learning a CAD program, studying birds, taking photos, editing the posts in my blog, etc.

<--- Clueless when it comes to love.

Self love is part and parcel of self acceptance, you can't love yourself if you don't accept yourself, and you can't accept yourself if you don't love yourself.
I'm still working on that one; mostly I tolerate myself, but have bouts of disgust and self loathing.
You need to learn to just be and quiet the mind with meditation and the like, maybe try Kristin Neff's website for more detail
http://www.self-compassion.org/

I think you need to do something concrete to have a genuine feeling of self esteem. But it doesn't have to be anything big, like racing into a burning building and saving someone or painting a great work of art.

It could be as simple as asking yourself at the end of the day, "did I do something today that helped someone, even if it was something small?" Or at least, "did I stop myself from saying or doing something that would have hurt someone?" If you spent the day alone, maybe at least doing something that needed to be done around the house or taking care of yourself, even if you didn't feel like doing it.

You can have self-esteem without doing anything to deserve it, I suppose. But as the song says, "Love, love is a verb/love is a doing word". Loving yourself involves expending the effort to take care of your body and its physical surroundings, and planning and executing actions that will improve your long-term happiness (getting an education, working a job, cultivating relationships, etc.) Sitting in one spot thinking "Gee I love myself, I am so great" might be nice, but won't contribute to the long term happiness of the one you claim to love.

One's definition of "succesful action" is a mental process too.

I think you should give yourself unconditional love and acceptance and then good actions will follow.

I love myself despite not looking "successful".

I know I have some good qualities, even if I don't exactly know which they are.
Sometimes I feel worthless too, but this is because my self-esteem has swings.

I don't feel the need to prove myself in some ways to know I am not worthless.

This is largely true for me.

I grew up with so many people telling me that I was worthless and that I'd never amount to anything.

So, I put a lot of time and energy and effort into being something great. In reality, I've failed at every career goal I ever had and struggle to do things most everyone else seems to do with little difficulty.

Okay, learning about AS has put a new perspective on everything, but I still don't feel better about myself. Yes, I need very little to be amused in life, but I keep feeling a need to find that place where I "belong" before I'll feel right about myself.

I can't answer question, because I have need for action, so I have always put things into action, so I have no unaction mode to compare, so I don't know if I would have similar self-esteem in unaction mode.

After a little think I have come up with 3 ways people can love themselves which do not depend on actions.

Uniqueness We often have loving feelings towards others because no one else is quite like him/her. Similarly, we may love ourselves when we realise that no one else on this planet who has ever been born - or ever will be born - can be the same as me!

Shared experience This is the effect where you develop caring feelings for the neighbour you have waved at every morning for the past twenty years. You have a strong feeling of bonding because you have shared a little something of those past 20 years. You can also have these feelings about yourself, when you remember all the experiences that you alone have gone through (in a way "shared with yourself"), good and bad over the course of your life.

Familiarity We often develop loving feelings for people who are like us, because they give us as feeling of safety and recognition. This can also cause us to love ourselves, because lets face it, no one is more familiar to you than you yourself!

I do not entirely agree with the new age Western paradigm of 'self esteem', nor do I personally strive for it. #confucianethics I feel that we have to be able to look at ourselves critically and love others more, thinking of others to the exclusion of the self, almost the destruction of the self or ego.

Maybe what you are talking about is I guess what people say "self pity", which is also a form of self-focus and what my religious friend used to call 'damnable pride'. Whether I have "good qualities" or not doesn't matter, who says what is good anyway? Feeling worthless, or guilty/ashamed, to me is a positive thing because it gives me the impetus to do things that help others to sort of 'even out the balance'. If I suddenly had a surge of self-love I would watch out for any ponds nearby so that I don't fall in and pull a Narcissus.

Feeling useful is more of a thing, for me, as someone brought up this topic. I guess that's my version of "self love" - giving my family money every month helps with repaying for my troubled youth, staying up late working the 6 to 10 to bring positivity into others' lives, doing volunteer work on top of my 8 to 6 day job, challenging myself to do random acts of kindness with no recognition. The #nodaysoff ethos is very big for me and I try not to think about the self, but about the other.

The good to me is not about happiness but utility and improving the lot of the collective. And the image of the collective, the image of my family, of the community in general. What use is an individual blood cell but part of a greater organism?

the way I learned how to love myself was to first make myself as much a local temple of god as I knew how to do, which meant totally revising my diet and exercise regime to make myself look decent for my age. it is far easier to love the reflection in the mirror when it is reasonably well-taken care of. then I had to start paying it forward and being good to strangers. I figured that if they are appreciative of me, then I myself can be appreciative of me also. I hope that made sense.

Ditto that, lifetime. Doing "it" vacuum-packed only gets me so far, however. The world comes in handy for editing. I take the attitude the free market will let me know which of my projects have better wheels than others and, in retrospect, I stay that course. Even the smallest success can get the leverage to the metal.

From your posts I think I conclude that actions/successful actions are needed in order to truly build self-esteem. This corresponds to my own experiences.

Life is basically about continually building self-esteem. Because without that you don't feel a reason to live - if you are worth nothing why should you keep struggling in everyday life! One has to build this "false" image that you are worth more than everything when the truth is you would soon be forgotten if you died. Most people wouldn't even care. This false image is basically built by thinking socially.

I now see that's why I've had problems with this. With Aspergers I've always sought the truth, and if you do this, your self-esteem will become 0 very quickly.