Is it conceited to Love Yourself?
February 27th, 2007
This 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.
Is Pride a Bad Thing?
February 20th, 2007
[Words: 846, Reading Time: ~4mins]
Is Pride a Bad Thing? Hell no!
First of all, feeling proud of yourself is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Your pride helps bolster all other aspects of your confidence, and radiates outward to inspire others.
Think for a moment what the opposite of pride is? It’s shame. I don’t think anyone for a second would believe that shame is a good thing. So if shame is bad, then pride is good. I understand this is very simple reasoning but it should serve to get the point across. Self admiration negates shame, as it’s very hard, if not impossible, to feel ashamed of yourself at the same time you’re feeling proud.
What emotions are healthy to feel about another person: love, acceptance, etc? Is it considered healthy to be proud of someone, to admire them? Of course it is? Then why would it be a bad thing to admire yourself?
Pride requires a lot of self knowledge. Not just in the sense of what you do and who you are, but it also means being in touch with your states and emotions so you can feel that sense of deep inner satisfaction. Again gaining self knowledge is considered a noble and worthy pursuit. Being connected with your emotions, particularly being able to generate and get in touch with positive and empowering ones such as satisfaction is a truly wonderful gift you can give to yourself.
So why do we feel conditioned that pride is a bad thing? This happens when you confuse pride with egotism. It’s expressions like “don’t let your pride get in the way†that give pride it’s negative connotations. Let’s take a look at what pride isn’t.
Pride isn’t egotism or cockiness. Egotism is a psychologically immature way to protect our self image from damage. It’s a way of lying to ourselves.
One could argue that we are always lying to ourselves, since we can never fully know the truth. There is a difference between chosing to interpret events a certain way(your belief system) and egotism. With egotism, there’s the knowledge that you’re lying to yourself, and the fear that someone will see through your façade and that the ‘real you’ is quite scared and not as confident as you’d like to be.
Cockiness is the McDonald’s of confidence, in that it’s all bright lights and fluff, with no substance. Cockiness/arrogance is a public brave front that falls down very quickly if scrutinized or attacked.
If you think about it, if you were (are!) perfectly confident would you find yourself needing to be arrogant? I believe you’d actually be more compassionate and giving. After all, you have all the acceptance, love, esteem, determinism, respect, belief, assurance and admiration you needed, you wouldn’t brag about these things in public, but rather actively help other people develop their own confidence.
To get over the guilt of pride think in terms of admiration. In fact, one reason I use the term admiration is it manages to bypass any negative feelings/guilt that can come with guilt. Who do you admire? People who are dedicated. People who make you smile. People who give of themselves and go the extra mile.
Are you proud of, or do you admire, people who are arrogant and cocky without any substance or sincerity? Of course not. And those people who you admire, would it be wrong if they took pride in their accomplishments and the effect they have on those around them? More than likely you wish they’d take more pride in who they are and what they’ve done, since you admire them so much.
Which raises an interesting point in that the people you admire you tend to feel they should have a richer view of themselves. If you can clearly see their value, you’d like them to. So to look at this through the mirror, other people clearly see and feel the effect you have on the world, and would like you to take more pride in who you are. So take more pride in who you are.
Whenever we praise another there is a tendency to brush it off as nothing special. It can sometimes frustrate us when someone doesn’t acknowledge the good thing they did or the positive effect they have on people. What we can do is acknowledge and take pride in the fact that we’re having a positive effect on those around us.
The last objection I hear people saying when I ask them to take more pride in who they are is they feel they’ve nothing to be proud of. I keep repeating this because once you realize this truth it’s immensely liberating. The greatest contribution you give to anyone isn’t in what you do, it’s in who you are. Your very essence is worth feeling proud about!
If you dwell on nothing else other than the fact (and it is a fact) that you enrich people’s lives merely by existing you’re inner satisfaction will explode and you’ll further enrich everyone around you.
Let me know how you get on.
Coaching Testimonial: Christian (Buenos Aires)
February 18th, 2007
What I wanted to overcome was my social insecurity, meaning that I got too nervous and resistant to any kind of social contact, Colm helped me to get into the right track to overcome this problem.
What I learned from him was a healthier way of thinking about social situations wich I didn’t know before meeting him and since then it has become my goal to get to that mindset, but since my problem was with me for almost all my life I don’t espect to reach my goal in a short time, nevertheless I have been making little victories in this challenge to change my ways of thinking with the help of affirmations wich Colm introduced to me.
With his thought provoking questions and his guidance I have learned wich parts of my mind are the weakest and also he helped me to get rid of conflicting ideas that didn’t help me at all.
The most powerful realization I had in our coaching sessions was when he taught me that fear is not bad, but its just a way to prepare myself to face a new situations, this made me change my ways of how I thought about fear and how I face my life and now I think about it as something good for me not something that limits me.
My feelings after the coaching is of gratitude and enthusiasm because he taught me the way to change this problem that I had for so many years, and im now walking on the path of a healthier and happier life because of him.
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