“I love myself.” That’s not something many people can say. Self love has been something that has become so imperative to my life, that it almost hurts. People believe that this process is all about making sure you take time for yourself when in reality it is so much more than that. Self love is a mixture of healing and taking action to empower oneself. It starts with taking a look and then doing something extraordinary — exceptionally extraordinary. You take the initiative to start healing. A lot of people think that once you start loving yourself that you are magically healed. Healing isn’t just taking a self care day because you need it. It’s not you quitting the job that isn’t serving you or the friends who aren’t empowering your growth. It’s not calling this year your villain year. It is fully diving into the depth of yourself and asking those hard questions that people hate to ask themselves.

  I conducted a survey on self love and received nearly seven hundred responses. My goal was to ask the hard questions that we never wanted to ask ourselves, in the form of a Likert Scale and short response answers. 

  From the responses, 95% of the survey respondents were women, and 42.7% of the female respondents wished they could change themselves to be deemed more attractive. When it comes to self love, 70.6% of all of my respondents wished they loved themselves more. How does someone start their self love journey?

  Though loving and healing yourself is an integral part of self love, it is important to have a community of positive people surrounding you. When asked who inspires the respondents to love themselves a little more, I received various responses ranging from their mothers and sisters to their kids and husbands. Some people even responded that I have helped them. 

  My self love journey started after a horrible break-up that left me with a freshly shaved head that was dyed pink. Talk about hitting a breaking point. I knew that I didn’t love myself as much as I should have, but I didn’t know where to start. I finally decided to start journaling. I talked about everything from what inspires me to what makes me feel worthless, and I changed it, starting with my social media. I removed people who did not encourage me to love myself.

  I had to dig to where my trauma started and forgive myself. I had to learn to be authentically myself, no matter what. It’s hard to love yourself when you are constantly at war from within. The survey respondents believed that being able to love yourself with no restrictions is what can bring confidence, and someone’s personality is what makes them beautiful. They are all absolutely right. It is so important to remember that you are you and you alone are the greatest gift life has to offer.