Loving Yourself Despite Your Flaws

This piece represents a great factor that seems to play on the minds of people regardless of where they come from. It is a phenomenon that has deep psychological factors, instilled into the mindset of humanity. The one prerequisite, if we are to follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is that the person surpasses the biological/physiological-need stage.

It’s a phenomenon that even I, at times, struggle with; even if I consider myself to be aware of it, for it to have already registered its place in my conscience and I am able to spot and identify it when it comes along. Although largely misdirected, it’s that attention-seeking, confidence-pursuing, self-esteem-hunting collection of actions that so many of us perform day in and day out in the hopes of fulfilling some sort of insecurity or some missing piece of a puzzle that somehow appears as if it would complete the whole.

First of all, I agree to the consensus that we all have insecurities. We all have areas of improvement, and yes, the cliché does say that no one is perfect. But the way we act on it, the way we tackle it makes a huge difference; it’s the difference between saying “I’m a human being, and this is the way I am” and “I admit my faults, but I’ll tackle them sensibly”.

This extreme effort in trying to either get people’s attention and/or acceptance or this desire to impress appears to me as a strong effort to put something out, to overcompensate for a gaping hole that lies within. And it just begs the question that, after all the effort, will that insecurity be corrected? Will that person feel rewarded with self-confidence? For all the image-building and all the stress, I doubt many come out with positive, long-term results – if pursued in the erratic manner that it is. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a beautiful car, fancy clothing, and the latest gadgets as much as the next guy (or girl!). But there is a fundamental difference in the two, that being that my intention is to personally enjoy them while for others it might be primarily to seek attention.

It might sound like a platitude; but truly, the way to get confidence is for you to look into yourself and be happy with yourself, with all your faults, with all your issues, with all the problems that you face, be happy with yourself, forget everyone else. Tell yourself “I know I have faults, I know I have some issues to deal with, but that’s okay, I’ll love myself, and I’ll work on fixing the things that I consider a problem”.

I remember being in class once, and I believe it was a humanities course, the first question the professor asked was “who is the most important person to you?”, we got the usual, “my family”, “my mother”, “my best friend”, even “my dog”! Then someone said something, and it really hit the spot, she said “the most important person in the world, to me, is me!” – And that is absolutely, 100% on spot! You should be the most important thing in your life to you. I’m not saying that you should treat your loved ones and whoever else is important to you in any other way but to treat yourself the best.