Thomas "The Tank" Dade

A little rant here and maybe controversial but I’m sick of all these self love quotes and social media posts. I’m sorry but you shouldn’t be trying to convince yourself how great and special you are after sitting on the couch all day, as you order your second round of McDonalds. Or telling yourself you’re beautiful for who you are after you’ve just got angry for no good reason and lost your patience with a new trainee at KFC. Self respect should come before self love, and really results in self love and confidence. Treating others respectfully, attempting to be honest with yourself and others, really putting your all into everything you do, eating well and keeping your mind and body healthy and well-maintained. These type of things are a show of self-respect. You’re not only improving yourself and the world around you but by practising these type of things you’re also respecting yourself. To love yourself without showing yourself some self respect would require quite a high level of narcism, and although we’re all somewhat narcissist’s no one wants to be too narcissistic.

Many of us from a young age are taught we’re special and capable of great things, and we’re treated as such. As a result we become a little entitled (generally) and start to think we should just love ourselves despite our actions because “we’re special and important”. That no matter how we treat ourselves or others we deserve love, ha, in my opinion this is far from the truth. If you’ve been binging on fast food, treating others like s**t, taking no care whatsoever of your possessions and body and go to work with a sh*ty attitude that ruins everyone else’s day, you don’t deserve self love. You shouldn’t be loving yourself by being a piece of s**t. Don’t get me wrong we are human and were going to make mistakes and have bad days, and can’t be “perfect” all the time, but…. an effort to attempt to better each day is enough. We all have the capability and capacity to love ourselves but that has to be earned. It’s earned by putting in an effort to be better, to try our best at whatever we do, by treating others with respect and understanding, by keeping our minds and bodies healthy, by maintaining our possessions and the things we own as they’re an extension of ourselves (respecting what you own is a form of self respect).

So next time your sitting there with 1000 rolls of fat on your stomach whilst your shoving your tenth spoonful of ice-cream in your face telling yourself you deserve love ask yourself. Am I being respectful to myself, to earn this so called love I’m apparently entitled to?