"The Greatest Love of All"

With Valentine’s Day coming up, it seemed like the perfect time to talk about love. Hence, the cheesy title of this blog post which as you probably know is taken from the pop song made big in the ‘80s by Whitney Houston. 

Often when we talk about love it is usually about loving others. How many of us, possibly aside from the very mentally healthy or narcissistic, take the time to think about how we love ourselves? We are critical of ourselves, we compare ourselves, and we think we’re not good enough; some of us can’t even stand to be alone with ourselves, at best it may sound like some of us are merely tolerating ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong in acknowledging mistakes, being able to learn from them and moving on is a positive thing. Yet how many of us really think about how caring we are, how kind we are, how good we are at something? You know that internal dialogue or voice that tells you these negative things about yourself, can you imagine saying any of those things to your friends or family members. You don’t say those things to people you love because it would hurt them. Then why say them to yourself?

It is very difficult to control our thoughts, this article on mindfulness and thoughts explains how it's impossible to stop thinking but what we can do is to learn to observe them and see them for what they are, just thoughts. You are not your thoughts and you do not have to react to them.

Learning to love yourself 
It is the greatest love of all

"The Greatest Love of All" may not be the song to live your life by but the lyrics above hold some truth. Some of us don’t really take the time to consider our own needs. We’re too busy being a mum, dad, sibling, grandparent, friend, manager, colleague, neighbour, and the list of roles we have goes on. We all know that selfishness is not a good trait but on some occasions, it is exactly what is needed. 

Most of us at some point or other have sat on a flight, half listening to the air steward’s safety instructions and we know that we should put on our own oxygen mask before we help others in need. It’s the same on the ground even when there isn’t a disaster, if we do not look after ourselves, we become unable to help others.

It's time for us to start learning to love ourselves, to start looking after our physical and mental wellbeing. Let's be kind and compassionate to ourselves and treat ourselves as if we would treat others we love.

Here are 52 ways you can be kinder to yourself.

Have you read our blog post 10 tips on how you can be happy in 2017.