It’s hard to learn to love yourself. But for full self-fulfilment, self-esteem is essential.

I suggest you explore 8 keys to learning to love yourself, and finally, to self-fulfillment and a fulfilled life.

Why learn to love yourself?

If you want to feel fulfilled, in touch with your life and, above all, with your values, self-esteem is essential. And that means learning to love yourself, unconditionally.

Without this full love of who you are, of what you really love, you’ll spend years doing what others expect of you, conforming to ways of functioning that aren’t your own.

You may even deny your own values, for fear of disappointment or rejection.

As the years go by, you won’t be living your life, but someone else’s (an imaginary model that has nothing to do with you). In the end, you’ll feel sad, like you’re just going through the motions, instead of fulfilling yourself by being who you are.

In this journey towards yourself, it’s not a question of standing still, but of moving towards fulfillment.

Who do you want to be? What are your core values? How do you want to interact with the world around you?

Recognize your strengths and cultivate them, instead of focusing on what others might think. Accept your full humanity, for a fairer and more serene relationship with your environment and loved ones.

Would you like to follow this path? Follow me, I’ll give you 8 concrete keys to getting there.

THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-ESTEEM
Before we embark on this journey towards greater self-esteem, let’s take a look at the main obstacles. (This will enable you to identify them, and thus take an important step towards self-esteem and self-fulfilment).

FEAR:
This emotion is very useful when it allows you to avoid danger. Unfortunately, our fears are often mental projections of negative anticipations.

You may be afraid of being judged, afraid of failing, afraid of being disturbed, afraid of being rejected.

Being able to identify your fears, and looking them in the face to verify their basis, will enable you, most of the time, to deconstruct them.

EXTERNALLY-BASED VALUES:
We all have values that are important to us, and that enable us to build our relationship with the world around us.

But sometimes, these values are external to us. For example, if your strongest value is “work”. You may give a lot of importance to what others will think of your work. And you find yourself chasing an unattainable goal.

Of course, you can have values outside yourself, but they shouldn’t depend on the behavior of others.

BLOCKING BELIEFS:
If you want to make the journey to full fulfillment, and learn to truly love yourself, you may be strongly blocked by beliefs that prevent you from moving towards your goal.

For example, superstitions: “if I do this, this will happen”. Or identifications: “if I have a good job, I’ll be happier”, or “my life will be better when I have children”.

So let’s see what concrete actions can help you learn to love yourself, so you can finally achieve your full potential.

CULTIVATE BENEVOLENCE TO LEARN TO LOVE YOURSELF
We can be particularly hard on ourselves, especially when we lack self-esteem.

At the slightest mistake, we reproach ourselves: “What an idiot, I should have kept my mouth shut, I’ve said something stupid!

These moments of inner criticism reflect a great lack of benevolence towards ourselves. We can even say very harsh things to ourselves, things we wouldn’t even say to our worst enemy.

Yet who hasn’t made a mistake, who hasn’t been wrong? And besides, do these reproaches really help us to avoid making the same mistakes?

So, to learn to love ourselves, let’s start by being kind to ourselves. If this seems hard at first, let’s start by doing it a little, from time to time.

DISTINGUISH BETWEEN OUR SKILLS AND OUR PERSONALITY
We all have skills, areas in which we are particularly gifted. And other areas in which we are average, or even not good at all.

And when we lack self-esteem, we tend to identify completely with these weak skills.

For example, if we can’t draw well, we can easily describe ourselves as “no good at drawing”. Yet we can draw, even if it’s not perfect. But that shouldn’t define us as a person.

Let me tell you a little story:

When I was a child, I was very clumsy in all team sports. When my classmates had to put their team together, I was always picked last. Because of my lack of self-esteem, I tended to imagine that they didn’t like me.

But now I laugh about it! Of course they didn’t want me on their volleyball team; I was afraid of the ball. But that didn’t mean they didn’t like me.

CULTIVATING ACCEPTANCE
Accepting that you can’t be perfect and strong in every area is the first step in learning to love yourself.

Acceptance is often mistakenly seen as giving up the desire to change. But it’s essential to accept that we’re “average” in some area, so that we can finally take action to progress. This doesn’t mean we don’t want to change things.

For example, if I’m not very good at drawing, I may consider that it’s not important. Or I may want to improve, and take lessons.

BEWARE OF YOUR THOUGHTS
We have an average of 60,000 thoughts every day. They are very useful for organizing our day. But some of them are absolutely useless.

You know, all those self-reproaches! All those projections about what might happen.

If you want to achieve your full potential, and learn to love yourself, it’s important to be wary of all these thoughts. The ones that tell us things that have nothing to do with reality.

We can tell ourselves a lot of stories, and this often prevents us from taking action, from saying what we really think, for fear of displeasing others, or of failing.

And one of the best techniques for learning to stop getting caught up in the mind is mindfulness meditation. If you’d like to get started with this practice, you’ll find an article on the basics here.

STOP COMPARING YOURSELF AND LEARN TO LOVE YOURSELF AS YOU ARE
When we lack self-esteem, we can spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others.

Of course, it’s rarely to find ourselves better, but rather to focus on all the things others achieve (often forgetting all the efforts they’ve had to make, or all the failures they’ve surely gone through).

This only distances us from our deeper nature, from who we really are.

By constantly comparing ourselves, we end up wanting to resemble the perfect image that others reflect back to us.

To be ourselves, to accept our deepest nature, is not to compare ourselves to others, but to accept ourselves with our multiple facets.

PRACTICING SELF-COMPASSION
Compassion means not only feeling the suffering of others, but also wanting to put an end to it. When we find it hard to love ourselves, and often blame ourselves, we may not realize it, but we are suffering.

Learning to love ourselves can therefore involve a moment of accepting this suffering, and wanting to relieve it.

To practice self-compassion, you need to be aware of those moments of inner criticism (which are moments when you don’t feel good).

By becoming aware of this suffering, you can then bring yourself sweetness and comfort instead of continuing to blame yourself. Just as you would with a good friend, who is suffering and needs comfort.

You can give yourself gentle words like: “It’s hard right now, what I’m going through”, or “I can be gentler with myself right now”. Or other phrases that make you feel good.

It may seem strange at first, but give it a try.

PRACTISING GRATITUDE
When we talk about gratitude, we often think of cultivating it for the things we own, for the events we experience, or even for the good fortune of having good friends.

But gratitude can also be practiced to recognize our qualities: to be grateful for having completed that project, to be grateful for having remained calm during a difficult conversation, to be grateful for our capacity for analysis, our responsiveness, our capacity for hard work, etc.

This enables us to focus more often on our successes. Little by little, we recognize our value. We can then blossom fully through our own values, and achieve our full potential.

CELEBRATING OUR SUCCESSES
When we focus on our shortcomings, constantly compare ourselves to others, and constantly blame ourselves for our mistakes, it becomes increasingly difficult to notice our successes.

Taking a moment to take stock of all the successes in our lives helps us to regain our self-confidence.

It strengthens our ability to learn to truly love ourselves. It also helps us see what we can achieve, and makes it easier for us to take action to realize our full potential.

FULFILLMENT AT LAST
The road to self-fulfilment can seem long, and sometimes tortuous.

At times, you may find it hard to step back and ask yourself the right questions. That’s when it’s time to get some support on this path, to unblock, understand and move forward.

I wish you a wonderful journey towards yourself.