What does it mean to love yourself? This is the question I get asked the most, and it was the most confusing question in the early stages of my self-healing.
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What Does It Mean to Love Yourself Wholly and Truly?
Good question!
While a lot of people have a variety of definitions when it comes to self-love, usually from their own unique life experiences, here’s a universal truth:
“Love is a kind of “giving,” not a feeling that relies on external validation to provide you with fulfillment.”
If you don’t fill your heart with love, how can you know how to love others? And how can you ask them to love you if you’re not prepared to hold up your end of the deal? Let’s discuss how to actually love yourself in a way that not just benefits you but also is rewarding for those closest to you.
Ready to go?
Keep reading!
What Does It Mean To Love Yourself (or To “Be Yourself”)
To get started, some common questions you should ask yourself are:
- Are you creating congruency between internal emotions and external appearance? (Most people put on a mask to show their best selves)
- What does it mean to love yourself? (Or to “be yourself?”)
- Do you really know how to love yourself?
Before I knew how to define self love (and what the heck that actually meant!), I thought that practice self love meant to treat myself regularly!
I would buy brand-name bags and beautiful clothes. I would eat delicious food and travel abroad frequently. Every action taken was meant to be nice to myself.
I thought as long as these things made me happy, I was doing my part of “being myself.” There is just one problem with that:
There is absolutely no consideration for other people’s feelings in this equation. Simply indulge in my own well being and fulfill my desires.
What is wrong with developing self-love and practicing self-care in this way?
After a period of time, I found it strange that I was trying so hard to love myself!
It really took a lot of effort.
Why?
Because every self-centered action I took was only temporary, the feeling faded away with time.
How to develop self love? There were still so many questions in the back of my mind.
Why did I still feel so empty (in my heart)? Why did my feelings of happiness come in ebbs and flows? When does the mental health of stability come into play?
Something still felt off.
My relationship with myself was not particularly smooth, I still can’t stop self judgment or don’t know how to control the negative thoughts. And the friends around me were all fair-weather friends and we don’t connect and communicate too deeply emotionally.
How to Truly Practicing Self-Love?
Then after years of inner turmoil (And putting on a happy face), I learn an important lesson by taking an imperative of questions:
Why have I been using material things to decorate and reward my own needs?
Is this really an expression of self-love or self-care?
I had never thought about calming down, time spent to learn about myself, and facing the inner “true self” from the heart.
Sounds scary, but here’s the thing:
Imagine when we buy a new trendy TV (or whatever your thing is), how do we maximize the value we get from the functionality of this highly technical device? Many of us may think, “I’ll just read the manual to maximize its true potential.” Or maybe you think you can just press that shiny power button and magically “turn on the happiness.”
How long will that last? There’s a reason buyer’s remorse exists. The satisfaction we get from “stuff” has diminishing returns.
To know how to truly self-love means to carefully read the instructions that belong to our own inner functionality. Why are we never taught to look inside ourselves and see the value that allows us to maximize our true potential and self-worth?
When we understand (and develop) ourselves in great detail, we will be able to reveal the best side of ourselves, so why don’t we do it?
When I learned this valuable lesson that “love” is an act of understanding and caring, I asked myself:
“Hey! Ava, have you ever really known and cared for yourself?”
It was an emotional experience, but when I finally quieted my mind and had a conversation with myself, I realized that the reason I didn’t know how to love myself was because I was avoiding the act of exploring the most important place where you can find love:
Inside of ourselves! It takes a lot of courage and determination to escape the fear and face the real and imperfect self head-on. Because we are accustomed to self-judgment and self-compassion for a long time.
And keep this in mind: I’m no special snowflake!
Self-Love is The Process of Spiritual Growth
I think everyone is the same as me. We always seem to judge ourselves harshly, we look at our own shortcomings and our own pain, we beat ourselves up, and we may even look for some kind of temporary relief. (Mine was retail therapy!)
However, we don’t accept and embrace our shortcomings. As a result, we might think our emotional mix contains 99% defects while we still try to squeeze out 1% of the advantages.
And after squeezing out every last drop of “value,” we wonder if it even exists. This habit generally stems from two things:
1. Societal thinking (and pressure)
2. Fear of facing our true selves
As a result, we try to “solve our problems” like we’re some kind of science project gone wrong.
Well, I say NO MORE! We are Enough!
Nobody else can define your inner strength. Only YOU get to decide who you are.
How do you do that?
It’s Time to Face Self Properly
Building skills like gratitude and practicing mindfulness can be effective first steps to learning how to love yourself.
By recognizing, accepting, and embracing our shortcomings and realizing that they’re not shortcomings at all; they are just a part of who we all are. When you sense that, something extraordinary happens:
Your fear disappears.
When you have a strong sense of self-love, you’re better able to tackle challenges. Negative feelings and self-critical thoughts compound stress. When we feel good, though, it’s usually easier for us to problem-solve. Self-love and self-compassion are directly linked.
When we have a high sense of self-love, we’re able to look at challenges as temporary setbacks — or even as opportunities for is likely to be.
Other studies have supported this idea by suggesting that having positive feelings about yourself may be a “key to happiness, success, and popularity” (Crocker, & Knight, 2005).
What does it look like when you don’t love yourself? When we don’t love ourselves we have more negative emotions.
When you are willing to face and challenge your fears, you become stronger and self confidence starts growing!
Fostering a loving relationship with yourself can be a long, complicated process, but will also create space for more happiness and freedom!
5 FAQ Questions & Answers
Q1: Why doesn’t treating yourself to nice things count as self-love? Isn’t enjoyment part of it?
Enjoyment absolutely has a place in a well-lived life, but as this article honestly reflects from Ava’s own experience, using material treats as a substitute for inner understanding creates a feeling that fades. The problem isn’t the nice things – it’s when they become the only tool. Genuine self-love is an act of understanding and caring for your inner world, not decorating the outside of it. Treats can be an expression of self-love once you’ve built a real relationship with yourself; they just can’t replace that relationship.
Q2: What does it actually feel like when you don’t love yourself – even if you look fine on the surface?
It feels like emptiness that no external experience quite fills. It feels like performing happiness while privately questioning whether it’s real. It shows up as relationships that stay shallow because vulnerability feels too dangerous, as self-critical thoughts that run constantly in the background, and as a persistent sense that something is off even on objectively good days. Many people who don’t love themselves function very well by external measures – they’re successful, social, accomplished – while carrying an inner disconnection they’ve never known how to name or address.
Q3: What does it mean to “face your true self” – and why is it so frightening?
It means sitting with yourself honestly – without the distraction of shopping, scrolling, achievement, or performance – and asking: Who am I really, separate from what others expect me to be? What do I actually feel and need? What am I afraid of finding if I look closely? It’s frightening because most of us have built elaborate systems to avoid that silence, often since childhood. We’ve been taught to measure ourselves by external standards and to see our flaws as disqualifying. Facing the true self means meeting the imperfect, vulnerable, complicated person underneath all of that — and choosing to stay.
Q4: How are self-love and self-compassion connected?
They’re deeply intertwined. Self-compassion – treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you’d offer a good friend in pain – is one of the most concrete expressions of self-love in practice. Research consistently shows that self-compassion reduces negative self-talk, builds resilience, and improves overall wellbeing. Without self-compassion, “self-love” risks staying abstract and aspirational. With it, self-love becomes something you actually do in the moment: when you make a mistake, when you fall short, when life gets hard. That’s when it counts most.
Q5: Is loving yourself a destination you eventually arrive at, or is it ongoing?
It’s ongoing – and this article captures that beautifully through the spiritual growth framing. Self-love is less a state you achieve and more a relationship you tend. Like any meaningful relationship, it deepens over time as you become more honest, more accepting, and more committed to showing up for yourself consistently. There will be days you feel it strongly and days it feels distant. What matters is that you keep choosing to return to it – to keep reading your own instruction manual, as the article puts it, rather than leaving yourself unexamined and undervalued.
“This article reflects personal experience and is not a substitute for professional therapy.”