SELF LOVE v/s SELF-AWARENESS

‘Self-awareness’ : the keyword that has a lot of buzz around it in recent times. This is definitely a good thing. In a world filled with materialistic achievements and success goalposts hovering around money and position, this is a welcome nudge. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a shift, let alone a paradigm shift. However, it is surely a move in the right direction.

While there is a lot of buzz around this word and its implications in one’s personal and professional life, this is the cornerstone of all the work that we do around ‘Finding Self’. As part of running this powerful workshop and as a consequence of my profession, I have the privilege of being part of many peoples’ self-awareness journey. This includes sharing their joys and wins, while also bearing witness to their struggles and tussles. One such tussle that I frequently come across is the confusion in handling self-love and self-care whilst in this journey of self-awareness.

As conversations around self-awareness are blossoming, so is the concept of self-love and self-care. Self-love is the capacity to acknowledge, accept and appreciate oneself for who one is. It is to really be able to take a deep breath and release it out with a lot of love for yourself, irrespective of where you are in life. There are two kinds of people I often meet in this journey of self-awareness work. One is the kind who can easily learn to love themselves, accept themselves. For such people, this journey of self-awareness often becomes about learning to accept and appreciate others around them unconditionally. The other kind is those who can easily accept others but struggle to accept, let alone appreciate themselves. We’ll first explore the latter and then step to the former. Irrespective of which category one belongs to, one thing is certain. It is crucial to understand this delicate balance between self-love and self-awareness. Today, let us dive deeper to understand how this balance is crucial, while seeming conflicting at times.

Let us first unpack the term ‘self-awareness’. Self-awareness is the capacity to look at yourself as objectively as possible, stepping aside from your preformed ideas about yourself and viewing yourself from a third party perspective, as far as it is realistically possible. This can provide an opportunity for those parts of you to come into the light that have so far been elusive or hidden behind your preformed ideas. These could be your deeper fears, your comfort zone, your ideas about yourself and others that are harming your relationships, etc. Often, these parts tend to be hidden because they are the dark side of oneself that one is taught to ignore or hide. Human instinct to protect and preserve oneself often tends to include preservation of our darker side from coming to light. This is the way we learn to protect ourselves from pain and suffering. However, it is important for these parts to come into our awareness to allow it to transform and bring an opportunity for growth. This process of observing our darker side and learning to first accept and then transform it can be challenging and tough. However, it is at times like these that self-love  becomes immensely crucial and useful.

Self-love, as described earlier, is the ability to love yourself just as you love other special people in your life. It is the ability to look at yourself with as much compassion and care as you hold for those special individuals in your own life, if not more. While this may seem practical and realistic, it is not the case for most people. While there are a few who may inherently show this level of self-love, there are others who struggle from either too much or too little of it. In my experience of working with people, most seem to suffer from a lack of self-love. Even those who previously had sufficient self-love seem to find it difficult to love themselves while on this journey of self-awareness. While it may seem like being self-critical is crucial in this journey, upon deeper inspection and understanding, it becomes apparent that self-love is a vital ingredient for this process. The ability to look at oneself with compassion here means to be able to acknowledge the humanness of oneself, allowing space to make and learn from mistakes. As we become more self-aware, a part of us becomes very uncomfortable and even loathing towards ourselves for having a darker side in the first place. This becomes more difficult when people suffer from the need to be perfect, the need to be their ideal self always, the need to live up to others’ expectations and struggle with many such hidden needs. It is at this point that self-love seems to be the farthest thought in their minds. Yet, ironically it is at this point that self-love is most needed as well. Self-love helps a person to be more compassionate while working on themselves. It helps him to be optimistic about the work needed to change, while acknowledging the importance of it as well. Since change is always a difficult event to deal with, self-love can make it more comforting and tolerant.

Whenever you find yourself in such a situation, needing and yet struggling with self-love, there are some things you can practice to make it easier. One of the easiest things to start with is ‘Gratitude’. As you may be struggling with looking for your strengths, this is an opportunity to list out things about yourself that you are most grateful for. You can begin by writing about just one thing you feel thankful to have about yourself every day. It is important to think of traits and qualities that you possess, rather than people or things outside of yourself. It could begin with something as simple as being grateful for the strength to be self-aware. As you begin to do this, you can add another small routine to it as your next step. At this juncture, you can start to spend time with those who value you for who you are, on a regular basis. You could schedule things you enjoy doing along with these people. This can work as a beautiful reminder that you are valued for who you are, even as you may be seeing your darker side. I am well aware that the mind detests such activity when it feels low. Yet, this is the time to persist and bring in new habits of support and encouragement, by bringing in a fresh routine consciously.

The other aspect we discussed at the outset is when people find self-love much easier than self-awareness. For such people, self-awareness comes in the way of their ability to love themselves and they would rather choose self-love over anything else. While this may seem wonderful and so self-appreciative, this has a major flipside. Such behavior can keep a person stuck in their journey, not getting an opportunity to grow and experience even better aspects of themselves. Their journey can become deeply meaningful and exploratory when they understand the true meaning of self-love. To love oneself does not mean to love in defense of one’s flaws. To truly love oneself means to accept one’s flaws and love the process of change rather than resist it.

In conclusion, I find it important to state that in order to master this fine balance between self-love and self-awareness, the key is practice. Akin to a pendulum that swings to both extremes multiple times before beginning to gravitate to its centre, it is only the repetitive swinging between self-care and self-awareness that can truly help one find that beautiful balance and the joys that it brings along.