Respect is one of those concepts that I think of in the present tense. Like if I respect my someone, I think of it in terms of who they are in the present tense. Conversely when I accept myself it is often thought of similarly. However, doing this limits the love and acceptance that I receive from myself. On the other hand, if I choose to love and accept the past version of me, I am allowing me to live out who I am more fully and completely. An example of this would be having a loved that has done something seemingly unforgivable in their past such as murder but choosing to still love them for who you know they are. This helps to eliminate living duplicitously because I distance myself from who I was thus practicing a false self-rejecting lifestyle that stands in the way of developing self-confidence. Keep in mind accepting who we are does not erase or justify the decisions that have been made by us, it instead prioritizes who we are over what we have done. This is foundational to how we view and treat ourselves not to mention others directly.

I sometimes cringe when I think of the embarrassing things I have done in my past. Failing to deal with past actions and but accepting me still separately creates stress memories that I know for me mess with my ability to have pride in myself. Besides, I think it goes without saying that self-hatred never did anything good for anyone. This same holds true for any version of ourselves past, present or future.

Practicing self-love directly correlates to how we view and treat others as well. I have experienced this in my own life. My ability to be ok with me directly corresponds to my capacity to accept and treat others with love. It goes without saying that each and every one of us is qualified for unconditional self-love and respect, but it is up to us to allow it and receive it.

Last and most important is it’s ok if we are not in a place to understand or believe in this self-love concept just yet. It is imperative though for us to let our value, gifts and purpose as a creation be a possibility letting ourselves process to understand why we aren’t allowing this as a truth and what it would look like if we did all this truth to apply to us. We need to have at least the willingness to entertain and accept on some level that we were made on purpose for a purpose and given unique talents and gifts to achieve that purpose through relationships. furthermore, we all are worth the time and resources to not only exist but improve to a place where we can see our own value and share it with a world that desperately needs each and every one of us as the solution we were created to be.