How Self-Love Benefits Your Relationships

Hello and welcome to episode 316 of The Mindful Kind podcast.

Over the last ten years, I’ve been working on strengthening my sense of self-love. While that might sound a bit cheesy, it’s honestly been a really important journey for me and it’s something that I’m glad I decided to prioritise.

I used to spend a lot of time criticising myself and judging myself. Sometimes, I didn’t really like myself all that much. I wanted to be more extroverted, more open, much smarter, have better style, feel more confident, and have a better sense of humour. There were so many parts of myself that I felt disappointed about - both internally and externally. I was used to talking to myself unkindly and mentally beating myself up over my mistakes and the things that I thought were flaws.

When I finally decided that I wanted to work on self-love, it wasn’t even about “loving” who I am. First, it was just about working on self-acceptance and learning to like the things that make me unique. My personality, the way I look, my ambitions, my choices - all those little things that allow me to be who I really am.

It’s been hard, sometimes. Other times, it’s been really easy. Especially after I started this podcast and started hearing from people who are similar to me in so many ways! It made me feel less alone and less alienated.

And the more I accepted and liked myself, I think the more I attracted people into my life who support and encourage me. And I’ll share more about this a little later on;)

I decided to create this episode to share the different ways that self-love can have a positive impact on the other relationships in your life. Because when I talk about self-love, I know some people feel like it’s a “selfish” thing to work on or that they don’t deserve it.

But here’s the thing. Yes, it’s amazing to decide to strengthen self-love for yourself because you want to and you’re excited to have a better relationship with yourself. But there can be other things to motivate you to strengthen self-love, including the way self-love creates some wonderful benefits for the other relationships in your life!

Let’s dive into some of those benefits and I hope they inspire you to either start (or continue) building self-love.

Benefit 1: You might become less judgemental and so people will feel more comfortable being themselves around you.

This is definitely something I noticed within myself and my relationships. The more I worked on developing self-love, the more I felt secure and open-minded, and the less I projected my own insecurities onto other people. It gradually became easier and easier to accept the imperfect parts of myself, or the things I thought were flaws, and the more accepting I felt of myself, the more natural it became to be accepting of others, too.

Benefit 2: You feel more genuinely seen and loved by the people around you.

I look back now and I remember trying so hard to be some kind of “perfect person” because I didn’t feel like I was good enough to just be myself. So, I felt like my friends and family didn’t love the real me. They loved the false version of myself that I’d tried to perfect - a shinier version without any flaws - while I hid away my vulnerabilities and quirks.

The more I accepted and embrace my real self, the more I felt able to share that version with the people around me. At first, I was scared that I’d be judged or that I’d lose relationships. But if anything, the majority of my relationships became stronger. Everything felt more authentic and my confidence in myself flourished because my friends and family were seeing, and loving, the real me.

Benefit 3: You probably won’t feel as drained in social situations and the more energy you’ll have to share with other people.

I remember in social situations, I used to spend so much time beforehand worrying about saying the wrong thing or being nervous about my outfit or the way I looked. I was so critical of myself that I felt tired before I even got to social events, even if it was just a coffee with a friend. (Let alone the energy I then spent trying to be perfect during the social situation.)

Now that I spend less time and energy trying to hide my real self or trying to be perfect, I have so much more energy to give to my relationships. Catching up with friends feels fun and exciting, rather than nerve-wracking.

Benefit 4: You can have more honest and open conversations.

I very rarely used to admit when I felt stressed, angry, upset, or lonely because those emotions made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. I was worried that if I expressed anger, people would think I was unkind or unforgiving. I was worried that if I expressed stress, people would think I was uptight or overthinking things too much. I had so many emotions that I locked away because they made me feel a bit ashamed.

But the more I learned to love myself, including my thoughts and emotions, the more I felt able to express those things. And so, the more I got to have real conversations about important things with the people in my life who cared about me.

Benefit 5: I’ve attracted more people into my life who align with my values and the things I really care about.

I started to express my real self, including my values, my interests, and my needs, and in doing that, I seemed to find more people who were quite similar to me.

For example, I used to wish that I could be the life of the party, that I could walk into a social event with so much confidence and charisma and have loads of fun. But I nearly always find parties really overwhelming, loud, awkward and draining. I love small catch-ups with my friends at home and the more I’ve been honest about that, the more I’ve developed stronger friendships with people who enjoy the same thing. We don’t have to be exactly the same and agree on everything, but I do love having friends who share some of my values and interests.

In saying that, I do also think it’s important to have friends who might encourage you to go outside your comfort zone! But they also know and respect your boundaries and limits and don’t make you feel guilty about your real self.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about some of the benefits that can unfold when you love yourself more. If you’d like to learn some strategies for practicing self-love, especially at the end of a tough day, then click here to read my article, 7 Ways to Practice Self-Love When You’ve Had a Bad Day. Each one of the strategies is specific and practical so you can start putting them into practice today!

Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a wonderful week, Mindful Kind.

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