Self-love

“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we could treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely love more ... See more

Rosie Spinks • Tuesday night dinner

We are working on self-love as a bedrock. But really nice thing about self-love is that it is contagious. Once you have self-love, you can also love and appreciate others more deeply and fully. Once you love yourself fully, you will be able to improve.

According to the Buddha, “You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” How few of us embrace ourselves in this way! With metta pr

Sharon Salzberg • Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Shambhala Classics)

There are aspects of ourselves that are easy to love and these are the ones that society glorifies. If you are a natural leader, go-getter, eloquent, you probably already like those parts of yourself because you were praised for them time and again. But if you are sensitive, intensive, flaky, crazy compassionate, slow to adapt, you’ve probably alre

Before I worked with the therapist, I never really heard from anyone that I am valuable just the way I am, just because I exist. I probably heard something like that in spiritual circles and thought: ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’. It never felt true, especially in the world of capitalism, academia, relentless competition in which we have to prove our wort

And yet, no matter what bravery we show to the world, most of us have recurring doubts about our worth. We worry that we’re not desirable enough, good enough, successful enough. We fear we’re not enough, period. Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation, one from which we could extend love out into the

Sharon Salzberg • Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

In this way, I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth.

Mark Nepo • The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Society also doesn’t appreciate your complexity. Why can’t you just be a simple prototype with desirable skills so that we know where to put you? We are a superficial society and complexity is way above most peoples’ heads. If you are an extrovert with deep emotional needs and who sometimes cry inexplicably, that’s way too much to handle. If you ha