What does it really mean to value yourself?

By: Sherrie Campbell, PhD

What does it really mean to value yourself? What it means to me has nothing to do with ego or an inflated sense of self. When we value ourselves we accept ourselves as human but love ourselves enough to do our best to handle life's challenges with dignity. 

Dignity is an internal sense of who you are and what you mean in the world...what your value is. If you are accepting below value treatment by letting others treat you poorly or unfairly judge or scapegoat you then you are not valuing yourself. 

To have high value is to have a soft, sweet but powerful sense of who you are. You have a love and exuberance for what you have to offer and the quality of love you are capable of giving and receiving. 

You then have to be sure you are giving this love to people who can receive it and have a high enough value within themselves that they know they deserve it and are capable of giving it in return. 

Many of us have had to learn the hard way that there are truly people who are "love allergic." They see love and maybe they haven't ever seen it before and instead of that love making them feel good it makes them angry, empty and hateful. This is because they have never been taught they are lovable. This is something that love from another cannot fix for them. It will be their life's journey to try and mend that within themselves, to learn to love themselves. If you have high value and you love yourself you will be able to accept you cannot save those people, but you can wish them well on their journey and hope they can find the remedies to their "love allergies" on their own. In the meantime get out of there and Love Yourself...the good is always on its way and being self-loving is a powerful attractor for all that good.