10 Signs That Determine You Lack Self-Love
Self love is a very divine practice and an ongoing lifetime process which is much underrated in the world. It’s a very significant concept that every person needs to be aware about. In every aspect of your life when you suffer set-backs, face challenges or deal with obstacles, strong foundation in self love will help you in every step of the way.
A lack of self-love is at the root of every challenge and self-sabotaging or self-limiting choice we make. Yet most people don’t truly know what self-love is. Many mistakenly believe it’s selfish.
Self love can be determined by how much you value, know, trust, believe and accept yourself, how much you know your likes and dislike, how much you know about your own emotions, triggers, your blocks and how fast you can deal with it and get yourself in balance and harmony.
Below stated are 10 signs that you might resonate with or someone around you may be facing right now. Share this with anyone who you think needs this.
1. You seek external validation
For every action that you have to take, you doubt yourself and seek out people asking for whether I am doing right or not, whether I am looking good or not, what should I wear, they didn’t appreciate me, whether I got likes and comments on social media pictures. These were a few examples of seeking external validation. One important thing here is that seeking external validation is not completely bad, but depending wholly and solely on external rather than internal validation might affect your soul in the long run as this process gives away your own power to other people which originally are yours.
2. You are sensitive to criticism
Criticism is a blessing in disguise. One who believes in this statement understands how powerful and life-transforming a criticism can really be. Many of us fail to have a positive perspective towards it and react, feel sad, bad, and get so hurt in the process which in turn costs you days, weeks or months to come out of that hurt space.
Instead, consider criticism as fuel to help you motivate and go after the desired goals and aspirations that you actually have.
3. You find it difficult to make decisions
Seeking external validation and struggling in decision making is something that is interconnected. If you struggle in making the required decisions at a certain point, there is also a high possibility that you might also be a people pleaser and constantly seek for external validation.
For you to become a strong and powerful decision maker, you got to understand yourself more, take ownership of your life and take your power back in your hands because let me tell you that your soul knows what it wants. Just connect with it, dive deeper within and try to find your answers there. There are High chances that you will make clear and confident decision when you operate from your soul level, when you honor, respect and trust your soul.
4. You don’t set boundaries out of fear of rejection
Setting boundaries refers to honoring your emotions, telling ‘NO’ to people where it is required. Constantly saying ‘YES’ to the things that you don’t want to do or not communicating to the person about the things you don’t like, for example, the words that they use for you, or their behavior towards you eventually contribute to crushing your own soul. Setting boundaries might seem really challenging for those who have not really understood its importance and what it might actually cost them. Yes, I agree that it might cost them their friendship, their relationship, the loss of a person you consider close to you. But it can also cost your own life as you constantly give away your power to someone else for your fear of being rejected.
The key here is to believe that you are worthy enough to be treated well by any important or unimportant person in your life. The stronger your belief in yourself, the more you will be able to love yourself more and stand up for yourself whenever required. Because let me tell you something, “No one, literally no one is coming to save you.” You are your own hero in your life Journey.
5. You struggle to understand your own emotions
Understanding, accepting, and validating your own emotions is the most necessary step towards having emotional balance. If you are someone who doesn’t understand what is it that you are feeling and/or avoid or disregard your emotions and feelings then it means that you need to understand yourself more and dig deeper into self-love.
Example: When you say that you are angry- What is the emotion laying behind it? It might be that you are not aware of the underlying emotion which might be sadness, confusion, non-acceptance of someone’s behavior or attitude, non-fulfillment of expectations about something, inability to express in the required manner, lack of communication all that is actually your real emotion here rather than anger.
6. You apologize a lot, even when the fault isn’t yours
The fear of losing our loved ones makes us get into this space of people-pleasing. This makes us constantly feel sorry for the actions that we did which were not really so inappropriate at that point in time or in that situation. We say sorry, apologize multiple times for no real mistake done. This action of yours may help you in getting back the person to whom you are apologizing but also remember there is also a price to pay here.
The price to pay is our own low self-esteem and lower self-worth issues. Resentment may also start to build up here in your relationships. Another possible thing is that when the other person actually makes the mistake then also they won’t apologize because they know that you will. They will start to take you, your emotions, and your actions for granted and the essence of the relationship might get affected.
7. You’re self-critical, only seeing your flaws and feeling unworthy
The attitude that you possess currently is the one where you keep on demeaning yourself for every little act that you do. You feel as if you are the reason for every problem that occurs in you and your loved ones’ lives. This also means that you struggle in accepting yourself, in forgiving yourself for the little mistakes that might have happened in your life.
8. You keep punishing yourself over the past
Understand that we humans are here to make mistakes and learn from them. As the saying goes,” To err is Human”, it is ok to make mistakes, but what is not ok is repeating them again and again. Constantly feeling bad about your past behaviors, actions or situations won’t really help you move forward in your life. Letting go of the past is the thing that you need to learn and start trying to look more into the future and how you can avoid the past mistakes or behavior rather than punishing yourself over the past. It will only lead you towards the undesirable state of mind, body, and soul.
9. You neglect your health and appearance
You are very well aware that you need to focus on your own mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical health, but still, you choose to focus on the people around you. You choose to take care of everyone around you but when it comes to taking care of yourself, you keep it last. You neglect your own needs, interests, desires, and dreams while fulfilling and helping others around you have all of it. Here I am not saying don’t help people around you, what I want to convey here is that you need to keep yourself first for you to serve others better in your life. I believe that when our own cup is filled 100%, we can pour the extra that’s being added up by your self-love and self-care for your own life and your own self.
10. You depend on others for your happiness
This is the most common and the most important sign from among the others because when we attach our happiness to the hands of others, most of the time we fail in being truly happy. The thing is that Happiness is a decision, and expecting happiness from external factors is like again giving your power to the other person to control you and your emotions. So, decide whether you want to own the remote control of your life or you want to hand it over to some other person.
Thanks for reading…
Read my recent blog Significant Factors that contribute towards deeper Self-Love: Part-1, and more such blogs. For more updates get connected with me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
