Self love and self confidence, are they the same? Do they go hand in hand? Can you have one without the other?
Recently I was asked define self love, and write about what it means to me. As I started to write down my thoughts, I noticed I was writing things to do with appearance, and then it hit me, I had self love confused with self confidence. Does any one else do this? Jump straight to appearance when hearing the word self love?
Out of curiosity, I asked a few of my friends to describe self love and self confidence. Like me, some of them also started to talk about appearance when it came to self love. Have we become so consumed with what we look like that we have forgotten its true meaning? Have we again let society and social media manipulate us and our opinions to the point we have lost ourselves? The answer, well for me personally is yes I have.
I’ll admit that I have let society create unnecessary self doubt, and low self esteem within myself that I found myself constantly questioning who I am. I became so consumed with what others thought of me, with my appearance, that I confused society’s version of self love with my own. Again I lost myself, I was blinded by society and allowed it to cloud my judgement and manipulate my opinions to the point I became so unsure and unhappy with myself and who I am. How depressing and embarrassing is that!! Seriously, fuck you society!
After taking some time out to really think about both seIf love and self confidence, I finally settled on my own opinion for each of them. No, I don’t believe they are the same, I believe self love is more about acceptance and self confidence is more about trust. In my opinion, you can’t achieve one without the other.
To me, self love is about accepting your entire self; mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It is about accepting the good stuff and the bad stuff that is within you. It’s about having regard for your happiness and well-being. Self love is knowing that you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and being okay with that.
Self confidence, this took me a little longer to come up with an opinion. At first, of course I thought about all the external stuff like body image, perfect hair, tanned skin, makeup and cute outfits. Don’t get me wrong, regardless of what people say, as shitty and shallow as it sounds, to a certain extent, I still believe the external stuff plays an important part in ones self confidence. It is however only just a small piece of the puzzle.
Self confidence is an internal state of mind, made up of what we think and how we feel about ourselves. It’s about trusting your ablities and having faith in the person you are. It’s about backing your opinions and your emotions without letting society, the media or other people manipulate them.
Self love and self confidence for me, go hand in hand, they both are equally as important as each other and they are both something that we all should really be taking the time to focus on. We need to stop trying to find these in materialist things, and more within the types of environments we create, and the people we surround ourselves with.
We put so much time and effort into loving others, into gaining their acceptance, that we forget about gaining acceptance within ourselves. Why is it we put everyone else up on a pedestal, but never ourselves? We get so consumed with other relationships, with wanting to be loved and accepted by people, that we jeprodise the most important relationship of all, the one with ourself.
Learning to love yourself isn’t easy and it’s not always going to be pretty. It’s an ongoing battle that most people struggle with day to day, but it’s a battle that is essential for our growth and our overall wellbeing. Self love is the most important relationship you will have in your lifetime, and like any successful relationship it takes work. It is something that without persistence and effort, something that cannot ever be conquered.
Falling in love with yourself is as beautiful as any love occurance, it is the most rarest form of love in existence and one most people never fully experience.
My goal: To fall in love with myself. To become confident within myself and to have trust in the person I am. I know it isn’t going to happen overnight, but I know I am one step closer today in achieving it.
When you hear the words self love or self confidence, where does your mind take you?
Peace and love homies
Xx
Sarah Unedited. 