“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.” - Mark Twain
On a plane, the instructions for emergency situations urge passengers with children to secure their own oxygen masks first, and then to assist their child. Similarly, you should be sure to establish a healthy relationship with yourself before looking to others to find happiness. Spending time seeking the approval of other people will be an especially fruitless and hollow pursuit if you don’t first approve of yourself.
Living With Yourself
When it comes down to it, you are the only person that you absolutely have to live with. If this “co-existence” can’t be a healthy and positive one, any other interpersonal relationships are unlikely to be completely healthy or positive either. One effective way to evaluate our relationships with ourselves is to practice holding our own thoughts to the same standard we hold the words of others.
Would you let someone else say the kinds of negative things that you say to yourself? Probably not. Most of us can admit that we are extremely critical of ourselves, significantly more than we allow others to be critical of us. But to what end? Why do we so often allow ourselves to be treated so poorly? We may think we have good reason, but we’re often doing more harm than good.
The Truth Doesn’t Have to Hurt
Many times we rationalize this overly-critical self-examination by thinking of it as “brutal honesty,” but it can often border on bullying. Critical examination isn’t inherently a bad thing. If done respectfully it can lead to instances of self-discovery, but when this process comes at the cost of your self-esteem, it simply isn’t practical.This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be truthful with yourself, just that the truth doesn’t always have to hurt.
You need to understand and embrace both your strengths and your weaknesses. Try to keep the internal questions and comments you make for yourself as productive as possible and within reason: beating yourself up won’t accomplish a thing. Oftentimes, we scrutinize ourselves while comparing our metaphorical blooper reels to the highlight reels of others. Understanding and recognizing this will help grant some useful perspective when it comes to how we treat and judge ourselves.
How and Why to Improve Your Self-Relationship
Avoid social comparison as much as you can. What matters are the strides you can make relative only to you. Note what you’ve accomplished, how you’ve grown, and appreciate it. Practice listening to your own thoughts and remaining respectful of your feelings. Address your desires, your perceived needs, and learn all you can from them. Never ignore your feelings.
Don’t expect this practice to make the stars align and instantly grant you enlightenment. Just know that self-love is a process that takes time, but it will ultimately make all other accomplishments in life that much sweeter.
This process will be extremely individualistic--there’s no catch-all guide to self-improvement and only you can know what it takes to make yourself happy. That’s why the relationship with yourself is the most important. No one else can take you where you need to be but you. True, the words of others can help. But they can also hurt. It’s just how you make use of them--how you choose to let them affect you and the life led in your head--that really matters.