All our life, we think the love we receive is the love we will get. And the optimistic in us believes that it will be fulfilling, and perfect. But that’s not the reality, the reality is much different. Loving yourself is the first falling in love we have to do.

One of the first rights you have to fulfill is the rights of yourself on you, your body, your soul, the wellbeing of you. We have heard it enough times; ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’; and yet we wait for others to fill our cup instead of taking up the responsibility of doing it ourselves.

It’s not easy, and it’s incredibly annoying that it isn’t, when in fact it should be the opposite. Loving ourselves, should be the easiest love to give, because we can’t cheat ourselves, you can’t be two faced to ourselves, we can’t ignore ourselves. It reminds me of a lyrics from a famous song ‘Where can you run to escape from yourself?’ Truth is we can’t. Yet we do, we try to run, run away from loving us, and whatever we have of our energy, and emotions we give to others and wait. Some of us have waited a lifetime for the love to be returned, and are sitting resentful, hurt, humiliated and what not. Is that fair?, Of course not. But is it fair that you expect others to love you, when you don’t love yourself enough? Who sets the standard then?

Giving up control over our own happiness, sanity, overall wellbeing, has let to many men and women feel poorly of themselves. Self-esteem issues, low confidence, and even severe mental health issues can step from not feeling wanted. But trust me, the worse betrayal is the betrayal of self. When you have you, you shouldn’t want anyone else to boost anything, everything else will be a bonus. Like the extra 500 steps you tracked after completing your target for the day. The love of the people, is the extra, it is the bonus. Let’s not make that our focus. Our target is to love ourselves, and find beauty in ourselves, in contentment in how we behave, and are with others, are we being real? Can I love myself just the way I am? Yes, Great! No, then fix yourself and be happy.

Spirituality takes up a big fragment of self-love, because within us is God (whoever that may be for you). And when you carry a piece of Him in your, what’s not to love? In philosophy of Islam that the qualities of Allah can be found in His beings, because we are all a glimpse of Him. These are few points I share in my motivational sessions with women and children, on the significance of human beings;
1. Allah created the whole universe for the human beings. The solar system, the animals and plants, the earth and everything yet to be explored has been created for the human being to explore and enjoy. How come we never feel wowed and amazed and flattered by that?
2. The Allah who has not created anything without a purpose, even the tiniest of things have been created by purpose, and He watches over every creature, then how can we feel unloved? uncared for? How can we feel there’s no reason for our existence? How can we not work towards finding the purpose for which we were created as individuals?
3. When you have the epitome of everything on your side, there’s no need to feel lonely, He was with you before you were born and when you die, it’s so beautiful that you go back to Him! It’s a beautiful thing that the end of worldly suffering will be the eternal peace of returning to our Creator. Then how can we not love ourselves, when one of His names is Al-Wadood

So, take the leap. Move the focus to yourself once in a while. There’s no need to live miserable waiting for scraps of love and affection from others. Set your standards, be the best human being you can be, and love yourself for the struggles and the journey of getting there. You are important, you have a purpose 🙂