“Love yourself before you love anyone else.” That’s a quote that is said often; some may even say it’s a cliché. But it is said often because it’s true. You need to love yourself and make yourself happy before loving anyone else or making anyone else happy. But how are we supposed to figure out who we are when we have no clue where to start?

The Importance of Self-Love in Finding Our Own Happiness

Let’s start with what is self-love. Self-Love is an action, a choice, and a way of relating to yourself about what makes you happy and meeting your own needs and desires. It’s how you view yourself and how you treat yourself.

Self-love is important because it motivates you to make healthier choices in life and set healthy boundaries in all aspects of your life. The way we feel about ourselves affects every interaction we have and every decision we make. If we have low self-esteem or lack of self-love, we can end up surrounding ourselves with the wrong people, mentally punishing ourselves, and hurting ourselves both physically and emotionally.

So, how can we start practicing self-love? Where do we even start? The first step is to start with the little things and find small things that make you smile. Just try and think, what makes you happy? Perhaps it’s a song that makes you want to dance for hours or the smell of a candle that reminds you of Christmas. Start small. Become aware of your feelings, be mindful of how you feel with yourself, with other people, places, and things. Write down all the things that make you happy, make you smile, and the things that make you sad, angry, scared, and resentful. When you are aware of those things, it will become easier to recognize them, enjoy the good things, and begin to shift any negative feelings or remove things or habits that bring negative thoughts and behaviors.

Once you have a better understanding of what makes you happy and what brings negativity, you can then start to remove anything that brings negativity into your life. Remove negative and toxic people from your life, stop going to negative or toxic places, and stop bad habits. Once you have removed the negative things from your life, you can concentrate on the things that make you happy.

Spend more time alone with yourself and learn who you are and learn to be content with yourself. Take yourself out to a nice restaurant, go to the movies or a concert alone, meditate, go on sunset walks, or sit under the stars and enjoy the evening. Give yourself compliments, laugh at your own jokes, find gratitude in your daily life, and you will begin to fall in love with the most important person in your life……YOU.

We are constantly growing as humans; we are expanding and finding new things that make us happy and new things that do not bring us joy. We constantly have to remind ourselves that we are in control of our happiness.

I have a passion project called Share Happiness Now that offers insights and courses on finding happiness in your life. Sign up today and get a free guided imagery session to help reframe your mind, as well as weekly emails to encourage you to keep pursuing your path to happiness.