Self Love starts with Friendship with yourself

Recently I've been doing alot of self reflection on what love means to me. Both love to & from others, and Self Love.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Love as: An intense feeling of deep affection (tender attachment). So it makes sense that Self Love is having a intense feeling of tender attachment for yourself. When I reread that statement it makes me think if I have ever had Self Love. I honestly can never say I have been very tender to myself, or had much of an attachment for myself more than a couple hours at a time. Which not that I think about it, thats pretty sad. I know myself better than anyone else, even the dear reader of this blog. :)

Can you say that you have Self Love? It reminds me of the quote I have heard many time recently.

“If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

-RuPaul

So maybe Self Love is too much to ask for right away. I mean unless you really know yourself well how could you possibly love someone you don't really know? When Nietzsche wrote:

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

maybe he had a point. If we can't be friends with ourselves then how can we truly want spend the rest of our lives with us? So I pose this challenge to myself and to you as well. For the next 2 weeks, treat yourself like you would your bestie. Be kind, gentle and more loving. Take yourself out to do things that you enjoy, or stay in and read a book together. Really embrace spending time with just you. Maybe try starting a journal to keep your thoughts about how this is going so you can look back on it sometime and read what you wrote and what your frame of mind what.

Remember Self Love starts with a friendship with yourself.