Why should I love myself?

CS Lewis on loving yourself:

You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself. In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don't cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to be hanged. You may even think that you ought to go to the Police and own up and be hanged. Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

Because your a great, honest, good looking guy. With fantastic, well thought out based takes.

If the most powerful, knowledgeable and loving being in the universe thinks I’m worthy of love, who am I to say otherwise? God knows us warts and all and loves us still. If you feel like you are unlovable, ask God how he views you. And listen. And perhaps seek some professional help if needed.

So I love this question as a gospel topic because we have so much information. The 2nd great commandment is to love our neighbors, AS WE LOVE OURSELVES. That last part is part of the commandment. The scriptures don’t speak much, if at all, about how to love ourselves, but they tell us a whole lot about how to love our neighbors. We can use that to discover ways to love ourselves. I see that commandant as having two parts in order to fulfill it, the neighbor part and the ourselves part. Got to do both. Sometimes it’s hard to love ourselves because we see all our imperfections and know all our failures, but the same issue presents in close relationships, especially marriages. The choice to continue to show your spouse or children love is what maintains the relationship in the face of inevitable human failures. I think it’s the same for ourselves. As we show ourselves love, we can maintain a healthy sense of self, both confidence and esteem, and it will help us continue to work towards being more Christlike.

My personal opening for a lesson like this would be something like this:

"What are some notable loving relationships in the scriptures or Church history? I don't mean only romantic love, but I don't not mean that, either." Then we can discuss each of the examples as deeply as I feel like.

I would ask one of my more outgoing quorum members to tell us about someone they love. Ask for others to do a bit of the same. Ask if the people they're talking about or thinking of are perfect, or if they have noticeable shortcomings. (Don't ask for specific details.)

This sets you up for the direct question: "Do you view yourself this way?" And then leads to "If you struggle to see yourself with that kind of love and grace, what steps can you take?" and "How will seeing myself with love change how I feel about and treat others?"

And lastly - here is Orson Scott Card on loving yourself

I think that Moses 1 is a good example.

God brought Moses before Him and demonstrated His glory. He then called Moses "son" like His son Jesus. At that moment Moses had a correct understanding of things. When Satan showed up:

And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?

I think "loving oneself" sometimes gets confused with being prideful or self-centered. What the scriptures teach us is that we are children of heavenly parents (insert young women's theme here) with divine worth.

And another by CS Lewis:

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently 'Love your neighbor' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

You are not the sum of other's negative opinions or view of you.

You are never the sum of the bad things that have happened TO you.

You are never the sum of your own worst choices.

If you are asking, then you may need cognitive behavioral therapy that will help you learn to think healthy (and talk to yourself fully accurately) which is hard to find with fidelity, even though most therapists claim to do it. You'll have homework. Here's a list of resources you might use while you are looking for a therapist. https://www.ecouch.com.au (an online version) https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/learning/anxiety-books?utm_source=pocket_saves

1-- Be sure you are eating healthy; getting sufficient restful sleep (with weighted blanket, white noise, etc as needed); and getting daily heavy exercise; serving others, and listening to inspiring (not necessarily religious) music, and being in nature.

2 --- Read "Believing Christ" by Stephen Robinson which will help you understand fully the atonement.

3 --- Which will reorient your efforts away from what you don't think you are or can be TO working to do your personal best in every moment (which will naturally get better as you do) and quickly repenting of actual sin, which together make you every day in every situation perfect in Christ through His Atonement which closes the entire gap between your personal best and object perfection.

Time for my favorite talk!

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/patricia-t-holland/renewed-spirit-mind/

Many of us create a civil war within ourselves by internalizing problems of fear, uncertainty, self-doubt, and worry—often over things we can do preciously little about. If we spend our time and energy worrying about being too tall or too short or about our freckles and warts and big noses, then I fear we are doomed to certain defeat. The person who is engaged in such a constant internal fight has little energy and power left to win the outside battles. To be successful in the many skirmishes of life, you cannot afford to be your own worst enemy. And taking the battles inside—firing mortal shells into your very soul—is potentially one of the most damaging of all human activities. Believe it or not, you can recover from poor grades or a missed date or a flat tire and dead battery on the car. But if you turn such outside matters into self-recrimination and self-criticism, letting them damage your spirit and your sense of self-worth and esteem, then you have begun a battle with a very high mortality rate indeed

...

Humility is very becoming to any of us, and humility comes from an honest and balanced recognition of both our limitations and our strengths. But I also think that the Lord will not be particularly comfortable dwelling with a person who (to the exclusion of all other joys and blessings in life) ponders continually his or her problems, who is obsessed and finally immobilized by them, who hasn’t learned to bear those limitations serenely. That isn’t humility, it is near-blasphemy. When you dwell on your limitations excessively, to the point that they affect your inner view and strength, you mock God in his very creation. You deny the divinity within you. You resist the gift of Christ on the cross.

Being self-critical is an act of pride because we are essentially telling God where we think we should be, instead of letting him guide us. It also stops us from thinking of others because we fill our own mind with thoughts of ourselves.

How do overcome it? Sister Holland gives some lovely suggestions in her talk, but one that changed my life is talking back to negative thoughts. Treating thoughts as external things we can dismiss or correct is exhausting, but it's that repetitive act that pulled me towards self-love. Like many things in life, the solution is simple but not easy.

When you love yourself it is much much easier to love others and spread love to others. I haven't loved myself in 30 years (my whole life) but now I finally am slowly starting to learn how to. It's not easy but it's worth it.

This is psychologically difficult for me, but to answer why it's important: it is directly in the scriptures. The two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart might and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself. The implication is that you love yourself. And it's clear from how Jesus taught that it was an important factor over shame.

Take everything (seriously, this is one of the rare everythings I've found) that you'd do to be nice to someone else and apply it to yourself. If you focus on the positive aspects of yourself, instead of dwelling on the negative components of things you do, then you'll be able to find the things about you that are worth loving.

The Gospel has a lot to say about this, you need to apply everything about charity to yourself as well. After all, if you hate or dislike someone, you'll give them less of a chance to prove themselves, and won't expect much of them. In short, the fruit of hating yourself is not believing that you can do anything, since you can't lift others higher than where you stand and all.

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How do I learn to love myself?

Honestly, you simply make the choice to do so, in spite of any shortcoming you feel you have and regardless of the value you feel others assign to you. And this because no matter what you are worthy of being loved, even if only by yourself. You do it the same way you'd automatically love an infant child without hesitation, because both that infant child and you are a crazily rare in this universe and of infinite value.

How does loving myself affect my ability to love others?

I'm not one that believes you can't love others if you don't love yourself, since I've definitlely loved others while not loving myself. I would say it makes showing love more sustainable, since loving yourself creates a great deal of inner peace and acceptance and thus you don't burn extra mental energy struggling with self rejection and the motivation dampening effects that has. So you will still be able to love others if you don't love yourself, but everything is many, many times easier if you do love yourself, and unconditionally so.

And I say this as someone who truly used to hate themselves, for numerous reasons, some religion related and some not.