Is it conceited to Love Yourself?
27 February 2007This is a guest article from Mark McManus, who writes on his blog at www.buildyourlifetoorder.com. Mark, apart from being a fellow Irish man, is keenly interested in self improvement and has one of the few blogs I read pratically every article. This article resonated with a lot of what I want to say so with his permission I post it here.
(Hopefully the pic loads Mark!)
Do you love yourself? Would you feel comfortable about answering ‘yes’ to this question if asked by someone? How do you feel about those that would say that they do love themselves? I will give my opinion here on why I believe self-love is not only not a bad concept but should be actively encouraged in others. However, there is a world of difference between self-love and conceit, let me explain.Conceit is defined at dictionary.com as:
an excessively favorable opinion of one’s own ability, importance, wit, etc.
Love, on the other hand is defined as:
A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
You might be beginning to see the big difference here but in my opinion here is the big distinction
Conceit implies that I need your approval to feel good about myself
Love means that I love myself regardless of what anyone else thinks
Take for example people that constantly boast about their own achievements to others. Why are they really doing this? It’s not that they love themselves, in fact, they probably don’t. They do, however, need to feel like others look up to and admire them before they will allow themselves to feel love. For these people life is a constant struggle to win the approval and admiration of others. Take the rap star that is constantly banging on about his houses, cars, women and jewellery. Your first instinct might be to say, “This guy loves himselfâ€, but I can assure you that a lot of the time, nothing could be further from the truth. What this guy is actually saying is, “Please, please approve of me. Please think I’m great because I can’t stand it when others don’t like me. I need your acceptance before I can like myself.â€
People that truly love themselves don’t feel the need to do this at all. They enjoy being themselves and accept themselves without external opinion influencing them. They might want to improve themselves in some way as is the case with people into personal development/self-improvement, but this is a personal matter, an opportunity for growth. These people have the attitude that says, “What you think of me is none of my businessâ€.
Why Is It Important to Love Yourself
Well apart from the fact that self-love ends a life of constant approval seeking, it also allows you to truly love others. Conceit will manifest itself in feelings of insecurity, jealousy and envy. Conceited people often try to ridicule or belittle others in a vain attempt to make themselves look good by comparison. This is hardly the attitude that will allow loving relationships to flourish. These people might get an attachment to someone but this is an attachment to how this other person makes them feel, as opposed to truly loving them for them. The important point here is then:
You cannot truly love someone else until you first love yourself
Jesus said that you should love your neighbour as yourself. This implies that you already love yourself first. I certainly believe that you cannot begin to love your neighbour if you do not to love yourself, your worldview will not be congruent with this. So you see, you will start to benefit everyone you come in contact with as you will engage with them in a more loving, non-judgemental way.
We all stand to gain when someone starts to really love themselves.
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