Numerous self-help books highlight the importance of loving yourself so that one can lead a happy life. It asserts that you have to embrace yourself first – the good, the bad, the ugly – before others follow suit.

But the idea is so abstract that sometimes we just take it at face value not knowing how this concept really works.

Today I discovered the connection.

Loving yourself is the antidote to all your deep-rooted insecurities.
Learning to let go of those little imperfections, not caring on what other people think, gradual appreciation of one’s quirks – all of these eradicates that voice inside our heads that tells us we’re not enough. Loving yourself means not being afraid of falling short of society’s expectations.

No insecurities means you treat other people better.
I’d like to think that no person is inherently bad. An adverse response to a situation is merely triggered by an unknown insecurity. If one is plagued with countless of insecurities, it’s easy to construe a mere inconvenience as an attack to one’s persona. Such attack is then countered with a negative reaction which, if not addressed, perpetuates the cycle of insecurity. Reducing these insecurities means you don’t dig up and over think any hassling situation thrown at you. You don’t think the world conspired against you for being so and so. You simply shrug it off and move on.

Treating other people better leads them to loving you.
This way, everybody wins!

Insecurities act as a barrier to our connection with other people. It is anchored on a profound level of fear (of being irrelevant, not good enough). This idea deserves its own blog space altogether.

—

This post is brought to you by the happy hormones I got after a good gym session. And also partly by Brené Brown.