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8 Reasons Why You Should Learn To Love Yourself

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For a majority of us, it is often hard to be able to say that we love ourselves and actually mean it to the fullest extent. Disliking ourselves, or not fully be able to love ourselves fully, could have been caused by a multitude of things. For some people, they may have gone through a traumatic experience. For others, it could be that they were picked on, bullied, or called unkind names. In my own personal experiences, I have dealt with all of the above; plus, some extras not mentioned.

We may also find it hard to love ourselves when we develop abandonment issues because of things like the absence of a parent, being left alone for long periods of time when we were little, frequent breakups that we had no control over or even the loss of a loved one. We may think that if the people we love and care about the most seem to always up and leave us, then that must mean that we are somehow unlovable which can affect how we feel about ourselves in the long run.

There are so many reasons why we should love ourselves. You are the only you that you have, and more often than not, the only person you can really rely on 100 percent is yourself. Here are 8 of the top reasons why you should learn to love yourself.

8. You Deserve Happiness

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A reason to love yourself is that you deserve to be happy. With loving yourself can come happiness that you have never known before. You deserve happiness, everyone does, even though you may not always feel that way – it is true. It’s hard to be happy when you feel like you don’t or can’t love yourself.

Imagine how freeing it would feel if you let go and learned to love you for you. It would feel like this giant weight was just lifted off your shoulders.

When you aren’t practicing self-love, you can’t be completely happy because part of happiness is loving yourself.

7. You’re Stuck With Yourself

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Have you ever been stuck in a tiny area with someone you strongly dislike? Most of us have at one point or another. At least one it comes to being around someone you hate you almost always have the option to leave; unless you live with that person and can’t get away. But more often than not, we can get away from the people and things that we dislike.

The one person we can never get away from no matter how hard we try is ourselves. 

You are stuck with yourself whether you like it or not. The best thing you can to try to learn how to love yourself, so you no longer have to worry about feeling uneasy in your own skin. You are really all you will ever have 100 percent of the time. Some people can’t even stand to face their own reflection in the mirror because of how much self-loathing they have inside of them. Learning to love yourself helps those uneasy feelings that some of us have. It will make you feel like your own best friend, and you won’t need to seek the approval of others. 

6. It Boosts Your Mental Health & Well-Being 

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Loving yourself can do wonders for your mental health regardless of what type of disorder you may have. It makes you feel good about yourself which can boost your mood and self-esteem greatly. You may even experience less frequent and severe depressive episodes. When you don’t like yourself, there is no way to be fully happy because the negativity you feel toward yourself will always be in the back of your mind waiting for the perfect opportunity to rear its ugly head and ruin your day.

Positive feelings about yourself can equal a healthier state of mind.

5. You Are More Than A Number

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In our society, sometimes we feel like we are just another number. We have our Social Security Numbers (in the United States), our medical record number, patient number, our weight, height, size, employee number, and everything else out there that classifies us numerically.

Never forget this: you are more than a number! You are not what you weight, you are not your inches, you are a person and a beautiful human being.

Part of loving yourself is getting rid of the notion that you are just a number. To your loved ones you have a name and face. Don’t go by what you see on a scale or anything else and end up disliking yourself over it. We are all made uniquely. You are who you are meant to be, so learn to love yourself.

4. You’re Beautiful, Unique & One Of A Kind

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We have touched on this one a bit, but learning to love yourself will allow you to truly see your beauty on the inside and outside. What you see in magazines and on TV is not reality. They had highly trained and paid professional to apply mass amounts of makeup on them to try to get celebrities to be what society thinks is “beautiful.” Don’t get caught up on that.

You are beautiful, you are unique, and you are one of a kind.

Even twins have their own uniqueness to about them. Learning to love yourself will allow you to see what the people who love you the most see, plus some. Everyone is made differently. We have to stop listening to what society tells us we should look like because we will never be anyone else but ourselves.

3. You Influence More People Than You Realize

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You should learn to love yourself because you are a more significant influence on other people then you may even realize. Just smiling at someone on the street or saying a few kind words to a stranger could have made their day so much brighter than you could ever imagine. You come across people all time and some of them you may develop friendships or relationships with, while others you may have only encountered once. You are loved by more people then you may know.

When we practice kindness with others, regardless of how small that interaction may be, we are influencing people for the better. You have impacted someone’s life in a positive way.

That is definitely worth loving yourself over.

2. You Will Be Much Happier 

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When you learn to love yourself you will that you are a much happier person in general. Self-hate surrounds us with negativity and brings us down, and sometimes we don’t know how to build ourselves back up. When you like everything about you, people will be able to take notice of this.

You will feel and look more confident, friendlier, and you will know that you are capable of doing anything that you put your mind to.

Go ahead, take a look in the mirror and try saying “I love you” to your own reflection. You may not believe it at first, but it will grow on you. Just remind yourself of the happier person and healthy person you are trying to become.

1. Who Else Can You Really Rely On?

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This last one is a very good reason for why you should learn to love yourself. How many times have people let you down? Maybe someone that was supposed to help you never showed up? Perhaps you were supposed to hang out with a friend, partner, or family member and they bailed? Maybe you needed to get somewhere important and your ride overslept?

People can sometimes be unreliable, and at the end of the day, we can truly only rely on ourselves.

We make our own decisions, we know what we are going to do, we know what we want to do and don’t want to do. Once you learn to love yourself, you may be able to see some independence that you may have never had before. Sometimes when we don’t like ourselves, we may not trust ourselves to make essential decisions. But that moment you can finally say “I love you” in the mirror and smile, you will know that you are also able to trust in yourself and in your own abilities.