“How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” — Rupo Kaur
“The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.” — Roy T. Bennett
“Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.” — Parker Palmer
[@rubinSecretsAdulthoodSimple2025]
“If you find it hard to take good care of yourself, care for yourself like a toddler: Don’t let yourself get too hungry, too tired, or too uncomfortable; too bored, too lonely, or too overwhelmed.” — Gretchen Rubin
“You are not one person, but three: The one you think you are; The one others think you are; The one you really are.” — Sathya Sai Baba 1
The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for the relationship you have with everyone else, which will rarely be healthier than your self-esteem.
To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.
Self-esteem is the reputation that you have with yourself. If you want to have high self-esteem, earn your self-respect first. The hardest respect to earn is one’s own.
Not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. 2
做自己的太陽，你就能當別人的光；讓自己發光，就能照亮別人。
- “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou
- “We live in a world with a lot of insecure, jealous people. Some of them are our best friends. They are blood relatives. Failure terrifies them. So does our success. Because when we transcend what we once thought possible, push our limits, and become more, our light reflects off all the walls they’ve built up around them. Your light enables them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self-limitations. But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it will be their turn to change for the better.” — [@gogginsCantHurtMe2018]
- “We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
The internal golden rule: treat yourself the way others should have treated you.
People respect you, only as much as you respect yourself. Others treat you the way you treat yourself.
Always put yourself first. Self-prioritize yourself. Take care of yourself before taking care of others, so that you can give them your best self. Self-care is giving the world the best of you instead of what’s left of you. Self-care isn’t selfish.
先自強，再助人
要先自私，才能無私
Analogy
- Put on your oxygen mask first.
- A starving chef can’t feed anyone.
The Ability to Love Yourself Improves Your Ability to Be Loved.
- We are unlikely to accept a relationship that is worse than the one we have with ourselves, and thus the person who is happy and comfortable with themselves is in a great position. The person with healthy self-esteem doesn’t have to jump into any relationship because they already have a great one wherever they go.
- If the time you spend alone is already enjoyable to some degree—that is, if you have a healthy internal monologue and generally feel good about yourself—then you will have a fairly high bar for the type of relationships you’ll enter.
- But if you’re unhappy with yourself, then you are more likely to put up with bad relationships because they may occasionally make you feel better than you do alone. If you want a great relationship, the first thing you want is to be comfortable with yourself.
Footnotes
-
“Sometimes you have to lose all you have to find out who you truly are.” — Roy T. Bennett ↩
-
“Thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness.” — Naval Ravikant ↩