Why Does Human Beings Love Themselves So Little?
The human being is a social being by nature for a very simple and logical reason: millions of years ago, we needed each other to survive. While it’s true that we no longer need others as much to survive, when we were born, that need for attention and care didn’t change much.
Children need to feel safe and that security can come from our parents or another figure who is responsible for our upbringing. In any case, this stability or confidence will make that child in the future an adult emotionally strong, confident and with a healthy self-esteem.
However, there are few people with these characteristics. Most people don’t feel confident, don’t fully trust their abilities, and aren’t realistic when it comes to self-assessment.
Why is it so hard to find a human being who loves himself unconditionally? It seems that the lack of love, affection, consideration or respect in childhood may be the source of this lack of self-esteem. Or, it can also be caused by overprotection or lack of specific limits, and the cultural formation received.
We are adults now and we can heal this needy child and help him to love himself no matter what others do.
The missing piece of the puzzle for this human being
It is likely that at times you feel that you are missing something. You can be physically attractive, professionally successful, have a loving family, and still find that something doesn’t fit. Most likely, you have low self-esteem.
So this human being continues to look for the missing piece and doesn’t realize that the piece that really fits is the one that he himself can manufacture with his love, acceptance and affection.
The reasons why we don’t have this piece is because we are fixated on education, culture, self-demands… The education we receive systematically censors any act of love directed at ourselves : they call it “selfishness”. In this sense, the child gets used to not knowing how to receive compliments, not talking well about himself, saying yes to everything, when in reality he wanted to say no, etc.
We have always been taught that we must put others first and that is not right. We will never be okay with others if we don’t meet our own needs first, if we don’t put ourselves at the top of our priority scale.
This “selfishness” translates into supposedly being a bad person and therefore into the fact that others will reject us. As we don’t want this to happen, we spend our energies with the intention of pleasing others and let go. That’s why we feel the pieces don’t fit and we feel empty: we abandon ourselves and that neglect doesn’t show love for ourselves.
How to start loving me?
To increase our self-esteem we need to treat ourselves well. We can start by writing a love letter to ourselves. No need to be vain, just realistic. We just love each other and let’s show that love, just as we show it when we love other people.
You will be surprised how complicated this exercise is because, as we said before, we are not used to praise. Your inner little devil will tell you that you are selfish, selfish, vain and a thousand other things. Don’t listen to him and keep loving yourself.
On the other hand, it’s time to start realistically evaluating yourself. Analyze yourself and be as honest as possible: you know your strengths and your limitations. Based on that, do what you know is within your capabilities and possibilities. Don’t believe you can’t and won’t do well, because deep down you know you can.
Finally, take an action each day that brings you closer to your goals and objectives. If you are successful, reward yourself and praise yourself for it. This will increase your self-esteem, because you will be telling yourself that “you can”. Forget about perfectionism and act knowing that perfection doesn’t exist.
You will notice that that missing piece will fall into place and you will no longer feel so dependent on the outside and on the love and acceptance of others. You will feel complete with your own acceptance.
