7 Signs You Don't Love Yourself Enough And How To Change That

Learn how to love yourself and create healthy self-acceptance.

Nobody wants to feel unloved.

Yet, one of the ways how we lack love is when it comes to loving ourselves.

Bible says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I want to say that many people struggle these days with not loving themselves enough and wanting to love others more than they love themselves. I have seen it more often than the other extreme — being a narcissist.

The lesson I learned a few years ago was that “I can only love others well when I love myself well.”

Self-love is the basis for unconditional love towards others and an abundant and fulfilled life in general.

Lack of self-love, self-esteem, and self-worth manifests as scarcity in finances, lack of trust in relationships, an unfulfilling career and job, and a sense of missing control of our own life.

Abundance, harmony, and fullness of life start from the inside. When we have a healthy self-image and we love ourselves, it melts the emotional blocks that stand in our way towards abundant life, fulfilled life, harmony, and happiness.

Here are seven ways you might not be loving yourself enough and what to do about it.

1. You Don’t Allow Yourself To Take Time Off

Life is demanding these days. We push ourselves to work hard to achieve our goals. Or we are highly ambitious to pursue the lifestyle we want; therefore, we relentlessly put in the effort day in and day out.

The more we work, the better, right?

Yes and no, I would like to say.

If you continuously deny yourself that day or at least half a day off, you will soon get burnout. And that will slow down your work and productivity for the next weeks.

You will be more sensitive to stress, get emotional faster, start to overthink, and be unhappy. Neither of these things contributes to your productivity.

When you genuinely love yourself, you are not willing to sacrifice your health — physical and emotional health — because of a task, which you can easily do the next day. If nobody dies because you don’t do it today, then you can do it tomorrow.

How To Change That?

Become relentless about putting this non-negotiable in your weekly calendar — a time for yourself.

It is similar to a plan to take control of your finances. According to Dave Ramsey, you should pay yourself first every time you receive a salary or any other pay.

My Example

My ideal schedule is six days of full effort and one day or half-a-day of time off.

I usually take off Sunday because I also go to church then. I love the chill afternoons when I am either reading a book, talking with friends, or just doing self-reflection — taking time for myself.

Some of my friends take off Saturdays.

Taking time off for myself helps me reset my thoughts, regain the right perspective, evaluate what I have done so far, and set actionable goals for the near future.

I do that even if my to-do list is piling up. My sanity, well-being, emotional and physical health is more important than a missed deadline. Others can wait.

The resetting part is crucial for a productive and peaceful week.

2. You Put Wishes and Expectations Of Others First

Pleasing others can be an unhealthy addiction. Occasionally people might neglect their dreams to fulfill expectations of parents, teachers, peers, mentors, or social norms.

You deny or postpone working on your dream because you are afraid of what others would say.

I believe this is a time of freedom. All over the world, people are becoming more and more self-conscious about their unique purpose in life and realizing that the lifestyle of 9–5 job is old and outdated.

They start seeing that there are countless opportunities to create the life they want. This is a time when those chains of living a life based on others’ expectations are falling.

How To Stop Putting Expectations Of Others First?

The first step is the notion and awareness that you do that.

Then try to depart from what is it that you have believed others expect from you.

Take off quiet time — go on a walk, travel on your own for a day somewhere. Forget about what everyone else thinks.

Get to a quiet place to truly listen to what your heart and intuition says what you should do.

Allow yourself to dream big. But don’t allow yourself to limit that by what others might say.

My Example

I have had to learn the lesson to stop pleasing others many times. For me, it was an issue that had many layers.

And I believe I am still on my journey to learn that. I have written here how I had procrastinated on my dream to build an online business because of what I thought others expected me to do.

The lost time has been my biggest motivator for change.

When we love ourselves, we don’t want to lose time living lives others expect from us.

I have understood that my life and time are too precious, and once an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year is gone, I cannot bring it back.

I have understood that if I am precious and worthy, my time is precious and worthy also.

3. You Often Put Yourself Down With What You Say

“I will never be enough.”

“Again, I messed it up.”

“It always works out for others, but not me.”

“I always seem to make that mistake.”

“I don’t look as good and fit as I should.”

“I can never be as good as he/she is.”

Have you told yourself such things?

Destructive self-talk is visible not only with what we say to ourselves silently or loudly. It also happens in our conversations with others.

Have you told such things about yourself to someone else? Perhaps as an excuse why you haven’t achieved something yet or haven’t taken action.

Let me ask you. Would you say any of these things to someone you love? A spouse, a friend, mom, dad, a child?

Probably no.

Then why would you ever say something like that to yourself?

How To Stop Destructive Self-Talk?

Often this may go unnoticed unless we consciously choose to pay attention to it.

If we pay attention to it, then we can fix it.

The first step is to notice and acknowledge the bad things we say to ourselves or others about ourselves.

For one week, play the “Notice bad self-talk” exercise. Be conscious of what you say. Especially at those moments when you feel overwhelmed, emotional, and things don’t go as planned.

Write down all the negative, toxic thoughts that you notice.

Take time at the end of the week to look over the list. Which ones are the most repeating patterns?

Turn around the negative thought into the exact opposite, for example:

“I have a unique set of capabilities and talents; therefore, I can be successful in my way as long as I put in work.” “I am always enough.”

Take on a 66-day challenge to change the negative belief pattern in your brain.

For 66 days every day, at least 2x (in the morning and throughout the day), read aloud the positive phrases you have written. Make sure you put in emotion when you say those phrases.

Why 66 days, not 21? Contrary to popular belief that it takes 21 days to form a habit, psychologists have found out that it takes on average two months or 66 days before a new behavior becomes automatic.

My Example

I changed deep negative thought patterns of “I am not good enough,” “I am not worthy,” “I could never achieve that,” etc., when I did this exercise.

After 2,5 months of consistent use every morning, my beliefs about myself had changed incredibly. So much that I felt like even if somebody would tell such toxic things to me, I have a shield of positive confidence against it. They can’t convince me of the opposite.

Thoughts that repeat more than once form a belief. Beliefs create a mindset. Mindset creates either life of abundance or scarcity.

4. You Apologize For Everything

You tend to take the blame in most situations.

You tend always to assume you should have done something differently.

You are very harsh on yourself, seeing that most of the wrong things are your fault, even if it was not in your control.

You don’t want the other person to feel bad, so you allow yourself to feel bad.

Taking responsibility and ownership of each situation is excellent, but it needs a balance.

Sometimes, you could have done nothing or lacked knowledge or experience to do it better.

It is ok to make mistakes because everybody makes mistakes sometimes.

When it comes to human relationships, then responsibility, most of the time, is shared. And from every challenge that comes in the way, there is a lesson for both people to learn.

It can be a simple as learning to phrase things differently.

Taking 100% responsibility when it might have been only, for example, 70% yours is wrong because it denies the possibility for other people to learn from mistakes and become a better person.

Suppose the other person gets used to you taking the role of a scapegoat always. In that case, that will bring unhealthy inequality in your relationship.

How To Change That?

Learn to distance yourself from the situation to look at it objectively. Evaluate what your fault was and what might have also been the other person’s part.

Don’t accept wrong or toxic behavior from somebody just because you don’t want to hurt his/her feelings by pointing it out.

Often taking responsibility for everything is a sign of conflict avoidance.

Reflecting on why you might avoid conflict can be a good starting point for the change. Conflict can often bring out many good things if it is healthy. It is beneficial when both people want to be emphatic and have a healthy balance of responsibility.

Another great tip is to turn your apology into gratitude.

When you feel like saying, “I am so sorry that because of me, you had to go the extra mile.” Say, “I am so thankful that you took your time and effort to help me with this.”

That will help the other person feel better for the right thing they have done. And will prevent you from feeling miserable because you take the blame for everything.

My example

Over-apologizing was an issue that I struggled with for quite a while. Since I had a toxic outlook on life, I felt a need to prove my love to others by continually caring that they don’t get offended by me about anything.

I felt like I can never do anything wrong or make mistakes.

I did not yet realize that it is a healthy outlook on life to accept your mistakes, and it is ok to be wrong sometimes.

Working on my self-worth, self-esteem, and learning to love myself, I also noticed how I take blame and responsibility where I should not.

When I learned to trust myself, accept myself as I am, and say good things to myself, I also learned a healthy balance for taking responsibility.

5. You Judge Yourself For The Mistakes

In other words, you are an extreme perfectionist.

“I wish I had realized it earlier…”

“I should have done this instead of that.”

“I made the most stupid mistake of my life.”

You might have made it.

But guess what? Everyone in their life makes their most stupid mistake at some point. For some, it is a more significant mistake. For some, a smaller one. For some, it leaves a more prolonged impact. For some, not as much.

With a positive outlook on life and a healthy mindset, and a good work ethic, you can fix the mistakes or turn them for good.

And your mistakes serve as lessons to elevate you to the next level of your life and help others who go through similar things.

How To Stop Judging Yourself For The Mistakes?

Take a moment to realize that:

1) everyone makes mistakes;

2) you can’t turn back the time, but you can choose not to waste the present moment in disgust of the past by forgiving yourself.

Become so self-aware that you notice moments when you feel like slipping into the game of self-blame.

Choose not to engage in this self-destructive thinking process.

Take a deep breath and decide to forgive yourself.

Take your journal and write down at least three things about how your experience of making such a mistake can serve a greater purpose. Either as a lesson or ability to help others with such things.

My example

I have moments in my life when I have been harsh on myself when making mistakes. I believe it also has been related to my perfectionist tendencies.

These two things helped me the most.

I realized and accepted the fact that everyone is great at some things and not as good in other things. Accepting such healthy truth was very freeing for me.

I also was trying to find things that I can learn from my mistakes.

I believe that everything in our lives serves a greater purpose. All things work out for good — also, mistakes, failures, and adverse circumstances.

What seems right now as a tragedy after a year can also be a lesson we needed to learn that helped us get where we wanted to be.

I believe there are individual lessons we need to learn in life before we are ready to get to the next level.

One of the biggest mistakes I have made was not being careful with my money. I had earned a good income during summers, but I always spent it.

I lived with a notion that there is always the next summer when I can earn a good income, so it is ok to spend it right now however I like.

Until the pandemic started, and I was not able to work in the summer as usual.

During the summer, I usually earn income for the year. And suddenly I was not able to do that.

I was so regretful that I had spent all the money I had.

It coincided with the time when I had just my newly found vision about building a life coaching business.

I regretted that I had only minimal time to invest in it now because I had to work full-time since I did not have any savings.

However, with the technique described earlier, I understood that self-blame does not get me anywhere.

I decided to love myself and look for the positives in my mistake.

Many new online-business owners have at first worked 9–5 types of jobs and then worked on their business in the free time after work.

I realized that doing both — a full-time job and building a business — will help me relate with other people in my life coaching business as a life purpose coach.

6. It Is Hard For You To Say No

Lack of self-love goes hand in hand with pleasing people.

You put others’ time as more valuable than yours.

And although it is a highly virtuous characteristic when we are selfless and sacrifice something for others’ well-being, this is not the case.

When your self-worth is dependent upon validation from other people, you eagerly want to do things that will prove that they are satisfied with you.

And you want to have that confirmation again and again. As if yesterday’s proof is not valid today anymore.

People are staying in the same old job for many years because they are afraid to let others down — boss and colleagues. Therefore, they remain in the position they don’t like, procrastinating on pursuing what they truly want to do in life.

How To Change That?

As we grow in self-love, we start to notice more and more ways how we have fallen into the trap of pleasing others.

Also, setting goals and working on your vision and dreams can help with this a lot. At least it did for me.

When I developed my vision in life what I want to achieve in 1-year, 5-years and 10-years’ time, I started to see how each of my decisions has a role in fulfilling my vision.

Suppose I continuously say yes to everything others expect from me. In that case, I miss time and opportunities to work on my vision.

My Example

I started to take ownership of my time and calendar, learning to say no to things.

As best-selling author’s Rory Vaden’s book “Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time” teaches, it is not about the right priorities anymore. It is about learning to which activities say “yes” to and to which — “no.”

I realized that I don’t need to show up at every event. I don’t need to agree to do something all the time.

It is ok to say “no” sometimes.

7. You Don’t Accept Compliments With A Genuine Heart

When someone compliments how you look, you tend to say something like: “That’s just an old dress, nothing special!”

Or when someone compliments what you have done, you might say: “Oh, I could have done it better!”

You deny the genuine compliment someone gives you with honest unbelief.

You feel undeserving. You have convinced and continue to convince yourself that it is not valid.

How To Change That?

Next time when someone gives you any compliment, say: “Thank you!” Smile, and mean it.

Accept the compliment. Hold yourself back from saying “but” + the rationalization why it is not like that.

My example

The feeling of “I feel good about myself,” improved a lot when I started to accept compliments genuinely.

One area I had struggled with was when I finished some task or project, and people said words of affirmation about the work I had done. I tended to say: “Oh, that’s nothing special!”

I disciplined myself to say, “Thank you,” without any “but” sentences following.

That helped a lot for my self-esteem and confidence.

Conclusion

Love is the most healing emotion, as biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., says.

When we give ourselves the love that we have always deserved, we raise the positive vibration that attracts more positive things, emotions, and events in our lives.

I feel that I have been on a journey to self-love discovery for more than ten years, and I am still working on that.

At least, I have understood what it is and noticed many unhealthy patterns in my thinking and behavior.

The first step to a change is the notion — being aware of the thought or action.

As Dr. Caroline Leaf teaches, then “becoming aware of a negative thought already eliminates a lot of its’ power.”

And the second takeaway that I want to leave you with is an encouragement to invest time working on your goals and vision.

For me, it has helped a lot for my self-esteem, confidence, and self-love.

When you see in your mind the person you want to become, you fall in love with the idea and process of becoming that person. You understand your life, time, and effort are worthy already, as every moment matters on your journey to becoming the person you want to be.

Thank you for reading! I would love to keep in touch with you! Click here to receive my newsletter “Fearless Growth with Laine”.