Choose to Love Yourself this Valentine’s Day

What do you choose to be?
Image: AliEdwards.com

We choose to feel love, peace, happiness, tranquility. It’s a choice. Many times, it’s easier to make the opposite choice—choose to feel hate, anger, sadness, stress. Our lives demand a lot of us, and making that extra effort to overcome frustration and upset can often seem like too big of a barrier to overcome.

But it’s not. I promise you, it’s not.

We’re coming up on Valentine’s Day, Hallmark holiday that celebrates love—but perhaps moreso, the sale of chocolates, roses, and candy. Couples will enjoy fine dining lit by candles. Love songs will play on the radio. Stores will look like a Pepto Bismol factory exploded all over them. Lovebirds will smooch in the streets. Haters will hate, rolling their eyes at the entire affair.

But as overwhelming as all that can be, I think this holiday could be put to good use if we all tried just one thing: loving ourselves.

If we can’t do that, how can we ever truly love or receive love from others? Love is a completely vulnerable state—we lay ourselves bare from others, showing them all of us (not just the parts we like) and ask them to do the same.

Pulling away from that vulnerability, no matter how slightly, builds the foundation for a wall—one that will keep us from truly loving others and letting them in.

Love yourself.
Image: Shutterstock

Loving ourselves isn’t something to achieve and then walk away from—it’s an active process and something that we should do every day. In an article for the Huffington Post, Mary Pritchard gives some great advice for loving yourself even if you have no idea where to start.

“Spend some time each day taking care of you, showing yourself love and appreciation for all you do,” she writes. “That is, do something that makes your soul sing—something just for you. Don’t take the kids with you. Don’t invite your significant other. This is YOU time.”

Choose to love yourself this Valentine’s Day. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Choose.