The most popular and universal advice for any troubles in your personal life sounds like “Love yourself!” Only few people are ready to clearly explain how to do this. I decided to try. Self-love is the most difficult and important feeling with which a person goes through life. And it, being carefully grown, has enormous healing power. Self-love is acceptance and care, it is the basis of ease and the ability to enjoy life. And this is also what your ability to love another person is built on. So, several ways to cultivate this feeling: 1. Accept responsibility for your life and stay in the present. We all come from childhood and each of us, deep down in our souls, treats ourselves the way significant adults treated us in childhood. If your parents believed that praising means pampering, then most likely you heard mostly criticism from them, and the habit of it and of evaluation in general accompanies you throughout life. In addition, such conditional love sooner or later gives rise to internal protest, and many of us spend many years in dialogues with the “inner parent”, proving something, making excuses and blaming in response. This process is reminiscent of looking at your reflection in a crooked and cloudy mirror and takes a huge amount of energy. The way out is to recognize yourself as responsible for your own life, including your inner life, and for what you fill it with. The past is in the past, and even if your childhood was not cloudless and filled with unconditional parental love, you have the opportunity to fill all other stages of your life with what you see fit. Our strength lies in our ability to change. Only you decide what rules you should live by and what makes you happy. Don't get carried away by regrets about the past and dreams of the future, live in the present - this is, by and large, all that you own and can control. There is no better time than now to listen to yourself and do what you really want.2. Surround yourself with people who value you. People who make you feel anxious, depressed or angry don't deserve to be a part of your life, and certainly don't deserve your precious time. Take a closer look at the people who make up your environment: how do they treat you? Do they value communication with you, love you, give you warmth and respect? Or do they constantly criticize, scold, devalue and assert themselves at your expense? If the latter, stay away from them for the sake of maintaining your own peace and mental balance. Just as leeches suck the blood from the body, such people suck your energy. Everyone has probably heard about energy vampires. So, even if such a vampire turns out to be a close and significant person - a beloved husband, a dear grandmother - this is not a reason to feed him with yourself. You can always build a boundary if you know exactly what you allow to be said and done towards yourself and what you do not.3. Invest in yourself Above all, we value what we invest in - time, effort, money, care and other resources. Invest in yourself, this way to increase your value in your own eyes works very well. Now it’s not just and not so much about money. Put your interests and needs first! Well, if not first, then at least on par with the interests of those you are used to caring about. The husband needs rest after a hard day, the daughter needs a new dress and shoes, the son needs help with homework, the mother needs support and attention, what about you? What do you need? Maybe a kind word, free time, an interesting study that you have always dreamed of, or a trip to a city that you saw in a dream? You have every right to receive all this and much more. Looking into his own soul, meeting himself, his desires, needs and feelings, a person gets to know himself and at the same time “feeds” attention and care.4. Recognize that you are good enough as is. The endless pursuit of the ghost of perfection does not allow you to feel satisfaction from what has already been achieved and certainly does not contribute to self-love. Accept your own.