The Art Of Being Alone

                  Self-Love Starts with SelfAcceptance

| have been using social media like a spy for the past year. During this time, | have seen the growing popularity of “self-love” and the more definitions | read on self-love, the less | became interested in even thinking about self-love.

Self-love has become more like self-pity.

If that wasn’t enough, giant companies and clever marketers took advantage of this growing popularity of selflove to sell cute shampoo bottles, expensive perfumes, and things like that. While | will never understand how self-love became about decorating yourself from head to toe, | want to share what self-love really means. A definition that is less accepted and discussed.

As clear cut as possible, self-love is about two things:

1. Knowing Yourself: What you think, how you think, what is your true nature, what is hidden behind all the manners and etiquettes, what is your personality and the like (we will discuss that in the next chapter)

2. Accepting Yourself: Acknowledging everything that is inside you and accepting it, be it good or bad. Most people hide their ugly side somewhere deep inside them so that no one can know their dark side. However, what you don’t realize is that the deeper you hide, the darker it gets inside your heart. And that darkness will swallow you bit by bit until you can no longer find the sunshine.
has made us believe that we must always be loving, caring, and cute. That’s what we see in movies and web series, right? Good people are good to everyone all the time. And we all install a desire subconsciously that ‘there are good humans and bad humans and if we can fall under the good human category then we will be loved and appreciated and accepted as well.’

Then?

We try hard to be NICE. We try to be good to people even when they are abusive to us because that’s what good people do, right? And this trial period keeps draining you because how can you be good all the time? How can you love others when you are hurt yourself? How can you be kind when you need to help yourself? You keep trying to meet the criteria of being a good person until you kill something inside you. And then suddenly you realize, oh, | need healing?

WOW! What a trap.

And this reminds me that even though we all want to be good and nice yet we sympathize more with the villain of any web series or book. WHY?

Because villains show us that ‘we all can be bad at times not intentionally but because we are designed to feel all kinds of emotions. We are not mobile phones where you cannot use Android features in ios or ios features in Android devices. You are a HUMAN. For God's sake, start treating yourself like one.’

Villains teach us that our dark side doesn’t define us but it is still a part of us. Since society is not very welcoming with traits that don’t fall under the good girl or good boy category, we just try to Suppress everything inside us that we genuinely feel, think, and love. | don’t know when you or | started silencing our inner voice but we have done it successfully enough to seek the definition of self-love in the external world.
If you ask me, | used to think | am a good person too. | believe in kindness, love, compassion, and being warm to people. | want to be the reason people still believe in kindness and love. But at the same time, | know | am not God and | make mistakes. Mistakes that at times hurt people. But hating myself for making mistakes or

for letting go of people or for saying whatever | feel cannot make me love myself.

So, can we please stop playing this game? Can YOU please stop pretending that your dark side doesn’t exist?

Let me share an example from my own life so you can relate better. As | said, | want to be nice to people so that | don’t become the reason someone cries. But after 2 years of constant self-examination, | have studied my behavior. And that behavior says that | can be selfish at times. Yes, that’s true. | am not all good nor am | God. | have chosen ME over my friends many times.

Although, the whole self-love journey made me realize that ‘it’s okay to accept myself as a selfish person.’

That’s one of the truths about me. | know good people are not supposed to be selfish but | am. | can either hate myself for that or learn to use this one trait in my favor. Learning to choose myself, my happiness, and my career over anything.

This one truth about me made me realize how | function in relationships (with friends & family). Since | know my behavior, | would always set my expectations

clearly so people know what they can expect from me. This clarity is what brings peace to your relationship with yourself and others.

If you don’t know yourself, you will make similar mistakes in your relationships with everyone and then if people leave you, you will say “Why doesn’t anyone want to be with me? Maybe | am not just lovable, or maybe there is something wrong with me that pushes people away.”
Self-love, my dear, is not only about taking bubble baths, applying expensive makeup to call it a self-care day. That just defines your lifestyle.

Self-love is about knowing everything about yourself, however ugly or dark or bad your truth is, and accepting yourself with it. Self-love is about knowing how to transform your flaws into your strengths rather than hiding them inside you so that no one can see them.

Self-love is about choosing yourself every single day to study your patterns, examine your behavior, knowing your thoughts (even if they are mean at times). Self-love is about creating a home deep inside you where you can be YOU without worrying about healing, pretending, or perfectionism. You are beautiful with your dark side not by hiding them under the mask of goodness.

| feel pathetic to say that there is a dark side in all of us. Because it’s not even our dark side, it’s just who we are. That is how we are designed. That’s what makes us unique and different from each other. You don’t have to be bad to people.

You just have to learn to not loathe yourself for having some traits that are not accepted in our welldressed society. Be proud of what you are and accept every bit of yourself.

Now that you know that you don’t have to be all classy and glassy to love yourself, | guess it will be a lot easier to get to know yourself. Let’s go on the journey of meeting you then. Shall we?