Coming in with a hot take. I see a lot of people, especially young women on social media, who have gone the wrong why with trying to find self love. It’s turned into self flattery. As viewing yourself as a “goddess on earth” or something else equally as large. It’s gotten to the point that I see women talking up this form of self love, this form of flattery as the definition of what self love is.

Self love isn’t seeing yourself as a goddess, it’s not trying to hold yourself so high up that you can’t hear your negative thoughts, actually it’s normally the opposite. It’s seeing yourself as a wonderful but flawed being worthy of love and worthy of all the time and energy it takes to improve.

Self love is more self acceptance than it is self flattery. Yes, you should look at yourself as someone worthy and lovable and good as you are, but you it isn’t just about praising yourself. It’s about loving the core of you, faults and all and knowing how to make yourself better.

Less “goddess on earth”, more “great but growing”.

The argument is that self flattery helps with self acceptance, but I don’t think it does. I think it’s a mask. It’ll either make you vain enough to believe yourself or it will just be a cover for your insecurities, a way to keep them invisible to other people. And that is not self love. You’re supposed to love yourself including your flaws, because your supposed to be working on them and therefore not defined by them.

So maybe lets stop with the self flattery for miles, maybe lets address the honest truth. We have work to do but we’re still so wonderful. So post all the selfies you want, just ask yourself to be honest in doing it.