What Does It Mean to Love Yourself?

It used to be that when people said you ought to love yourself I got this disgusting, narcissistic image of someone stroking himself and murmuring “you’re some swell guy” under his breath. So much for loving yourself. It was only later that I came to realize that, indeed, you can’t love anyone else unless you also love yourself.

Loving yourself, as I understand it, means behaving toward yourself somewhere between the way you would behave toward a good friend and toward a child you loved, whom you wanted to grow up to be strong and self-respecting.

Although you wouldn’t always like their behavior, you’d accept your friend and the child as fundamentally good people. You would encourage them in their endeavors, take pleasure in their successes and come to their aid when they became discouraged.

You would not judge them harshly nor condemn them. You would not insult nor degrade them, nor otherwise lead them to feel that they were worthless or a failure. In short, you would be a good friend to your friend and a encouraging, supportive parent figure to the child.

Treat yourself the same way, and – at least in my view – you will be loving yourself. And all without even a touch of narcissism.