I like to think of self-love as caring for, and tending to, a beautiful garden. That garden is me. And the gardener, who cares for and tends to the garden, is also me. 

As a gardener, I can see if my garden is thirsty, and give it water. I can nurture my garden by feeding it good food with healthy nutrients. I can keep my garden in shape by pruning any plants that grow too fast and become out of balance with the others. And I can weed out any unhealthy plants, those that would poison the garden, making the others ill. As a gardener, my job is to make sure that my garden stays healthy and in a state of balance and harmony, to make sure it grows at a steady rate, towards the light.

Thinking about it like this, self-love is the way we care for and look after ourselves on a daily basis. It’s the way we treat ourselves. And this treatment can lead to feelings of well-being or ill-ease, overtime. It can lead to contentment, joy and happiness, or it can lead to discontentment, unhappiness and even states of depression.

So if it’s that important for our wellbeing and state of mind, then why is self-love sometimes difficult? Most of us know the phrase, but why do we have trouble taking the action? In the end, the research suggests that the difficulty comes down to our programming – to our beliefs about how loveable we are and to the habits and behaviours we create from these.

Our programming starts when we’re children. Because when we’re little, we don’t always receive clear messages from our caregivers that tell us we’re loveable just as we are. Instead, we get labelled as the smart one or the pretty one or the good one. But for a child when we hear this message we take it on board as meaning if I’m not smart, pretty or good, then I’m not loveable.

As children, we’re fragile and impressionable. So if we don’t get the love we need from our caregivers when we’re young – if they withdraw their love and their ability to meet our needs because of their own life struggle – then we can easily think that them not loving us in the way we need is “our fault.”

We may think that there’s something wrong with us. That we’re broken. Then we carry this belief – that we’re not enough – with us into adulthood. And what do we do with it? Well, we try harder, try to be better, or to do more or to be seen and acknowledged by the world – all just to get the love we crave. But in the end none of this will never truly satisfy us because it’s only when we love ourselves, and when we meet our own needs, that we can be/feel whole.

Psychologist, Marisa Peer says, “If you can’t love yourself, nothing else matters.” This means that no matter how much you achieve in the external world, you’ll always feel an emptiness within. You’ll always be grasping for more: recognition, fame, money, beauty, possessions, food, experiences, relationships, people, sex, stimulants… You’ll keep reaching, always trying to fill an inner void that nothing external can ever fill.

In the end, the ability to love ourselves lies entirely in our own hands. And I’m here to tell you that there’s incredible power in knowing and acting upon this.