For this Valentine’s Day, while many people are deciding where to go for dinner and what special things to do for their partner, some people have other plans. They’re going to focus on self-love.

While traditionally, Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate romantic love within a relationship, sometimes it’s important to break from tradition. Why not take Valentine’s Day 2025 as a time to fall in love with yourself?

Self-love is not self-indulgence

People often misunderstand the meaning of self-love. They see it as self-indulgence or selfishness or letting ourselves off the hook for bad behaviour. They don’t recognize that what it really means is self-acceptance and self-compassion.

The world we live in makes it easy for us to be hard on ourselves. There’s so much pressure that we’re under, and there are so many people who are constantly scrutinizing and judging us. It’s easy for us to take in all the negativity and start to believe it.

Unfortunately, all this negativity increases our stress and causes us to feel bad about ourselves. It affects our mood, our sleep, and our habits. It makes us irritable and impatient with those around us, and it makes us more distractible and forgetful in our personal lives and at work.

Self-love is not about self-indulgence; it’s about being okay with who we are. And when we’re okay with who we are, it’s easier for us to be okay with other people; to be less judgmental and less critical toward others.

Paradoxically, when we lack self-love, it’s harder for us to grow and change. That’s because the self-criticism is so strong that any self-reflection is accompanied by a lot of negativity toward ourself.

On the other hand when we have self-love, it’s easier to grow and change because we can look at ourselves honestly without feeling bad about ourselves. We can see the behaviours that are problematic or the choices that aren’t productive and recognize that things need to change, without beating ourselves up over what we see.

Self-love enables personal growth

I’ve always found that personal growth is only possible with an attitude of self-love. The compassion we have for ourselves enables us to see the truth about our choices or our actions without feeling like we’re bad, stupid, or somehow defective.

With self-love, we’re empowered to face the truth about our past, and about the way it has affected us. We can see the connection between our current behaviours and the things that happened to us when we were younger.

Instead of blaming ourselves for the choices we’ve been making, we can reflect on how the hurts we’ve experienced in the past have caused us to engage in certain problematic patterns of thinking or acting today.

Instead of being self-critical, we can forgive ourselves for the bad choices we’ve made and understand that these choices were driven by hurts we experienced in the past and our subsequent reactions to these hurts.

With self-love, our insights aren’t associated with self-criticism, so it’s easier to see things about ourselves that we’d like to change. If we want to grow and develop and be the best version of ourselves, self-love really is the fertile ground for this change.

The challenge of building self-love

Some people find it challenging to build self-love. That’s because they absorbed negative messages from the people around them when they were growing up. Maybe they had critical or dismissive parents; maybe they had teachers, coaches, or clergy who were hurtful to them. Maybe they were bullied by their peers at school.

Whatever happened, these negative experiences have convinced them that they’re not good enough. When they think of self-love today, they don’t feel like it’s possible, or that they deserve it.

It doesn’t help that our media is full of messages that make us feel inadequate. Whether we’re watching a TV show or scrolling through social media, there’s so much out there that is designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. We become convinced that self-love is impossible.

The truth is that self-love is available to everyone, and everyone deserves it. And the paradox is that the more we love ourselves, the more likely it is that we’ll behave in positive and constructive ways.

People who have self-hatred and anger at themselves tend to be destructive, both toward themselves and others, whereas people who have self-love tend to be kind, caring, generous, and tolerant toward themselves and others.

As I mentioned above, the more we love ourselves, the better we feel, and the better we feel, the easier it is to be loving toward others. Self-love is a real win-win proposition.

So, this Valentine’s Day, why not take the day to fall in love with yourself. Whether you’re in a relationship or you’re flying solo, you can always benefit from building your self-love. It will make you happier and it will make you a nicer person. And then, if there’s anything that you want to work on within yourself, it’ll make it that much easier to do so.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

—-

Sign up here for my free bi-weekly wellness newsletter that brings you fresh, thought-provoking content.

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel where you’ll learn simple tips for taking the best care of yourself and your loved ones.

Tune in to my Ruthless Compassion Podcast where I go in-depth about topics like mental health, trauma, and loneliness.

Tune in to my Reel Mental Podcast where I host lively discussions with film critics and explore how mental health is portrayed on-screen.

Complete our Audience Listening Survey here.