How to Love Yourself.

Transcript:

“HAPPY VALENTINE’S DA- Yeah no, it’s lame, isn’t it? Just, kind of a sucky day. It’s fine and cute for some people but for others, meh. It’s just not their jam.
You know what else isn’t some people’s jam? Marmalade. You know what else? Themselves.

There’s a 95% chance that you watching this video don’t like yourself very much and you don’t know how to stop that. You’d rather know how to reverse it and parallel park it somewhere. Preferably in a nice, little tight spot between self-esteem and confidence.

And you’re not the only one who doesn’t know how to drive this way: just a quick search online and you’ll find multiple videos about self-love which all had over a million views. But judging from this the people watching them didn’t learn how to love themselves because they then went on to watch the next video and then the next…

And I get it, I do. I have spent many a day mentally berating myself with cruel, malicious vocabulary. It was a really healthy daily routine. Like brushing your teeth with chocolate spread: it feels satisfying and right at the time but after a while you start to make yourself ill and your teeth get gross. Though unlike brushing your teeth with chocolate spread, where you can actually see the negative impact this habit is having on your body and self-esteem, negative self-talk doesn’t show itself up as easily.

Valentine’s Day is a billion-dollar industry. No joke, last year American consumers spent $18.2 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day merchandise. Let’s call a spade a spade, it’s merchandise. We spend a lot of money investing into an emotion towards someone one day a year; appreciating them for exactly who they are and what they mean to us. We then spend the rest of the year investing thousands into trying to fix the things we don’t like about ourselves in hope money will take all the self-loathing away. In 2017 the diet industry had a worth of $66.3 billion dollars and the global cosmetic surgery and procedure market is expected to reach $43.9 billion by 2025.

Kanye West of all people is the one who pointed out that societies control people with low self-esteem, improper information, branding and marketing. We’re told to be humble but never told to be great. We’re not taught how to love ourselves, and that message isn’t encouraged because it’s not profitable. What would people sell us if we loved ourselves exactly for who we are? Maybe we’d invest more money into our education, artwork, or buy more of those little name badge stickers with smiley faces on them. Hi, I’m not Insecure. How are you?

But I’m not here to highlight potential, profitable gaps in the market, I’m here to tell you how to love yourself. Warning: it requires work. I know, such a pain, let’s stick to the easy option of hating ourselves, am I right? I’m not going to tell you to accept compliments, take long walks and meditate. I’m going to tell you of the four steps you need to mentally undergo in order to love yourself, which conveniently creates the memorable and totally relatable acronym: APLA. Now be careful not to mix this APLA up with all the other APLAs you refer to, ok?

You are in charge of your own thoughts and opinions. Horrible, destructive and malicious stuff happens to us in life; people make us feel worthless with such conviction that we start to believe them. Employing agency after a lifetime of mistreatment isn’t easy, but it’s basically the hidden superpower you didn’t know you had, because no one told you how to use it. As your own agent you control your own self-esteem. You dictate the opinion you have of yourself, and to employ this superpower you have to push all external opinions out of your head. Agency requires you to put your opinion first, as the only one that matters. What’s affecting your self-esteem is your allowance of negativities to push aside your agency and control you. You own yourself, you own your esteem, don’t let external factors and voices dictate how you should perceive yourself.

Mental health issues keep us trapped inside our own minds, effectively within neurological labyrinths, and it seems and feels at times to be impossible to escape. One of the kindest and most powerful things you can do for yourself is to fight this imprisonment and step outside your mind as much as possible. No future, no past, just an awareness of solely the now. This may sound impossible but it’s not. I’m talking from experience here, this technique changed my life and mental health forever.

“Well how do I get myself out of a mental labyrinth?” I hear you ask. Not to worry my friend, here is a diagram. Do you have a problem in your life which is causing you distress? No? Then don’t worry about it. Yes? Then next question. Can you do something about it? Yes, then don’t worry about it. No? Then don’t worry about it.

Effectively what you need to remember is all roads lead to ‘don’t worry about it’. Overthinking generates a lot of energy, which ironically gets wasted. You don’t invest this energy into the past, you don’t invest it in the future. Actually, it drains you from the energy you have today. Be aware of yourself today, how you are feeling today, and what you are doing today. Even if it’s just getting out of bed. Then accept how you are feeling. Don’t be ashamed, don’t feel embarrassed by it. But maintain awareness about where you are and what you are feeling and doing at all times; focus on the now and you will find your mental wellbeing improve five hundred-fold.

Cool, so you know what society wants. Society tells you what they want you to look like, how and what they think you should be. But the markers of your self-worth shouldn’t be determined by external factors, the markers should be generated by you. An essential part of self-love is asking yourself if what you want and need in life comes genuinely from a self-inspired desire, or is motivated by an external pressure. Are your opinions about how you look or what you do in life entirely derived from your own subjective thought, or have they been influenced by society and those around you? Start small, identify things that you like and what your values are. Whatever it is that you do in life, such as work or study, ask yourself genuinely what parts of this you enjoy. Do you enjoy them at all? Are you actually doing something and being someone you like and are proud of? Do these match with your long-term goals of happiness in life? If not, adjust accordingly. No questions asked. You live once: adjust accordingly. It’s scary, but you have to take action yourself where life is letting you down. It’s not going to change itself. You have to make the change.

Which leads onto the final step of self-love:

Once you’ve taken responsibility for yourself and your own entity, the only step left is action, and this is the act of loving. The best way to explain self-love is actually to describe it as parenting yourself rather than mollycoddling yourself. Good parents give love but also take on a role of responsibility to ensure their child grows up productive, happy and successful. So be your own parent: love yourself with a well-intentioned motivational push now and then. But remember, you can’t take action until you’ve completed the three steps before.

This is why you should just ignore all those ridiculous comments like “snap out of it” or “just get over it” or “just do it”. You can’t “just do” anything in life, everything worthy requires effort. You won’t be able to “just do it”, but you are able to achieve it. You can do it, it just takes time. Baby steps. You don’t just pass the exam: you attend classes, study, practice, then pass. You don’t just run a marathon: you train, stretch, eat healthy, research, push yourself, then run. You don’t just love yourself: it takes Agency, Presence, Legitimacy and Action. APLA.

So you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day of acknowledging to yourself how much love you deserve to be giving to yourself. If you like what we’re doing on this channel you should subscribe and consider joining the Rebelleon on our website, fearlessly.co.uk, an online magazine which encourages readers and writers to explore issues about mental illness through creativity. Everything mentioned is linked down below and until next time, positive vibes from Fearless Femme.”

Cinzia is a passionate bibliophage, writer and literary researcher from Scotland whose socially awkward mannerisms can be attributed to bibliophilic nurturing.

She studied her Masters in Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and her BA in Classics and Literature at the University of Birmingham. She produces her own podcasts, videos and writing essays. Oh, and she reads a lot, obviously. But that would be like adding at the end ‘she also spends a lot of her free time breathing.’