If you hate yourself, and are asking this question, then you are probably not aware of what ‘loving yourself’ means. You are not alone by the way. It is a very, very, very common misunderstanding.
We confuse love with ‘approval’. So loving myself would mean approving myself.
If hating means judging myself negatively, loving would mean judging myself positively.
But I am judging anyway!
Imagine a plant that is not growing well.
Do you judge it negatively and ‘hate’ it? Do you judge positively and write poems on it? No!
Does not mean you like it to be that way. But you don’t judge.
You simply say “It is what it is. What needs to be done to make it grow?” And you do it.
And you keep asking this question no matter what. That’s love. Not your positive judgements. You might blame yourself sometimes, but not the plant!
You love the plant…but maybe not yourself 🙂
There is a small chance you might interpret my answer as “So basically I should not judge”
But ‘should not’, ‘must not’, ‘shall not’ are useless. We do it anyway.
Notice that your judgements don’t make a difference to the plant.
What will make a difference is your nurturing. And that too with stuff you can control. You might provide the best soil, a good fertilizer, good water. But you cannot control the air quality, or the sun light.
But you do your best.
The plant does it best.
It is what it is.
Realizing this is love.
Even if you do awesome things, or horrendous things…useful things or useless things…even if you are a saint or a terrorist…that was the best you could do at that moment. It might not be enough. But it is your best!
Even if you hate yourself, blame yourself, do bad things – that’s the best you can do. You don’t know any better! If you knew, you would!
Then you become OK with hating yourself too.
And that’s the moment when you start loving yourself.
