If there’s one thing that I wish I would have known earlier, it would be the importance of loving yourself. I spent a lot of time and energy looking to love someone else. And as a teenager and in my early twenties, I thought that if I could find someone to love that they would complete me.

The scene in the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire stands out to me: Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger “You complete me.” It’s a great romantic moment, but I wouldn’t recommend you take this advice to heart.

We complete ourselves. We are our own heroes.

For too long, how many of us looked for someone to save us? If we grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, we struggled and hoped that we could find the love that we needed (maybe from our parents who couldn’t be there for us due to addiction or the dysfunctional behaviors within the family dynamic).

But that was then, and this is now.

Today we have the power to love ourselves. Yes, warts and all.

No one is perfect and we can strive to be a better person each and every day.

The power to love ourselves is so essential to our healing. Learning to like who we are and then have that blossom into a full and lasting love is so necessary in our lives.

When we realize that we have self-worth and that the love we carry inside is enough, that’s when the magic happens.

We’ll stop looking for outward approval from others. We’ll find that our well-being doesn’t depend on whether the world around us is okay but how we feel inside.

The key to self-love is also to have a healthy balance of humility.

We are imperfect beings who are whole and complete. That paradox defines who we are as people. If we’re open to learning more about ourselves and on continuing to improve, we will set ourselves out on a path of happiness and contentment.

When we make a mistake, we need to own up to it. Not berate and put ourselves down, but self-reflect and do the hard work to embrace our imperfections.

For me, this is why I follow the Twelve Steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics Anonymous. The steps are structured in such a way to help us work on dealing with our pain and giving us the reflections to make amends when we’re wrong.

Self-love does not mean that we are never wrong. Loving ourselves means that we love who we are, and when we do make a mistake, we have the courage to admit to it, and then work to fix the problem.

Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.