Throughout your life, you will build relationships with others, whether it is with family members, friends, or romantic partners. But the most important relationship you need to build on is the one you have with yourself. If you don’t make yourself a priority, none of the other pieces in your life will ever come together. Here are 5 signs you need to learn to love yourself more.
1. You Allow Little Mistakes To Ruin Your Day
How do you respond when you make a minor mistake at work or say something amongst your social group that makes you feel silly? If you’re able to brush these things off and learn from them, it is evidence that you have healthy coping skills. On the other hand, if you ruminate on these thoughts and refuse to let them go, it will lead to a downward spiral in which you convince yourself that you can do nothing right. There is simply nothing constructive about self-loathing.
2. You Make Excuses For Bad Habits
The key to living a happy life is to be good to yourself and make decisions that help foster a healthy lifestyle both physically and psychologically. But when you have a negative relationship with yourself, you find ways to develop terrible habits that lead you to sabotage your life. Instead of recognizing your self-worth, you go down a path of self-hatred in which you convince yourself that there are no good resolutions. As a result, you might choose alcohol or drugs to cope with the pain. Or you develop an eating disorder as a means of punishing yourself for not meeting your unrealistic expectations of how society should view you. Of course, in many cases, people who have a toxic relationship with themselves get into relationships with others who are abusive. In the end, such people believe they deserve their fate rather than surround themselves with positive people.
3. You Neglect Your Mental and Physical Health
People who live healthy, well-balanced lives understand the importance of self-care. This could mean going out for a jog a few times a week, making sure your home is clean, or rewarding yourself with an afternoon at the day spa. But people who have toxic relationships with themselves will often engage in the complete opposite. They’ll lay in bed all day; they allow their trash can to overflow; they never take any time to treat themselves to anything good. Those who neglect their own needs will feel exhausted and irritated and will resent others who do look out for themselves.
4. You Don’t Bother Trying Or You Quit Right Away
Do you ever catch yourself deciding not to do something because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re going to fail no matter what? You don’t seek out that appealing job vacancy because you figure someone else would do it better than you. Or you do start something and quit right away because you figure there’s no point. It could be that you believe you are unworthy of any success, even the little ones. If you’re constantly criticizing yourself, conclude that you deserve any acts of kindness or compassion, or otherwise do everything possible to keep yourself down, you probably have extremely low self-esteem.
5. You Can Never Accept Positive Comments From Others
When other people praise you — whether it is for a job you did or a compliment on your new hairstyle — it is intended to make you feel good. When a supervisor believes you deserve a pay raise or even a promotion, these are things that should make you feel confident about yourself. But when a person has a toxic relationship with themselves, they are incapable of accepting any form of positive feedback. In many situations, they will simply respond by insisting the praise is undeserved or even untrue. In time, those around you will simply stop even trying because they know you will only answer with bitterness. In order to get yourself out of this cycle of negative thinking, it is important to appreciate kind words and understand that when others say good things to you, it is because they believe in you. What you need to do, therefore, is believe in yourself.