Some­times, a life­time of sub­tle and overt neg­a­tive con­di­tion­ing can lead us to a place where it is dif­fi­cult to love our­selves. The good news is - we can turn that around by ac­ti­vat­ing these four prin­ci­ples to help us love our­selves again.

SELF-AWARE­NESS Each of us is the end prod­uct of our past ex­pe­ri­ences. Con­se­quent­ly, we may be liv­ing with a mass of neg­a­tive feel­ings about and neg­a­tives im­ages of our­selves. When we recog­nise that such a life is less than we de­serve, we should look be­yond what we have al­ways be­lieved to be true. Of­ten, our flawed im­pres­sions and bad ex­pe­ri­ences rob us of the truth about who we are and it is dif­fi­cult to love the per­son we see in the mir­ror. There­fore, we should take steps to un­der­stand who we are at our core, in spite of our his­to­ry and the lega­cy it has left us.

SELF-CLEANS­ING Many of us car­ry emo­tion­al bag­gage. Neg­a­tive thoughts and feel­ings dom­i­nate and change the land­scape of the dif­fer­ent phas­es of our lives and leave us with bit­ter mem­o­ries. In­stilled in your child­hood and re­in­forced in adult­hood, they con­tin­ue to cre­ate hav­oc in our dai­ly lives, re­la­tion­ships and ca­reer pur­suits. To cleanse our­selves of the stench of our emo­tion­al bag­gage, we need to ex­tract and deal with the "old and dirty stuff" one by one. We need to ask and an­swer the why, what, when, where and who ques­tions to un­der­stand the old sto­ries. This may in­clude re­vis­it­ing old wounds that are still ten­der. Though dif­fi­cult, this step can be the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to ini­ti­ate a thor­ough cleans­ing and last­ing heal­ing. As we fix, dis­card and cleanse our­selves, we learn to love our­selves.

SELF-FOR­GIVE­NESS Some­times the root of our lack of self-love is our in­abil­i­ty to for­give our­selves. Some of us are guilty of beat­ing up on our­selves for past fail­ures and mis­takes. When we for­give our­selves, we throw off the bur­den of guilt and shame. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we free our­selves to ex­plore life be­yond the bound­aries we un­in­ten­tion­al­ly set for our­selves by our in­abil­i­ty to for­give our­selves for things we said or didn't say and things we did or didn't do.

SELF-AC­CEP­TANCE Lov­ing our­selves in­volves ac­cept­ing our­selves com­plete­ly with our men­tal, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al warts. Yet, so much of what we see and hear tells us that "we are not enough" as we are. Even as adults, we might be­lieve that we should bring our­selves up to cer­tain so­cial stan­dards to be ac­cept­ed by oth­ers. We may have the undy­ing love of fam­i­ly, loy­al­ty from friends and ad­mi­ra­tion of busi­ness and so­cial as­so­ciates. Yet, we might still not ac­cept our­selves, what­ev­er that may en­tail � per­son­al­i­ty, pref­er­ences, im­per­fec­tions, idio­syn­crasies, tal­ents, abil­i­ties, achieve­ments and po­ten­tial. To love our­selves, we need to move to the point where we ac­cept that we are enough, as we are and we are enough for our­selves.

Un­like ego and its bad rep­u­ta­tion, a healthy self-love builds con­fi­dence. It em­pow­ers us to as­sert our­selves, to take cal­cu­lat­ed risks and to set bound­aries to safe­guard our in­tegri­ty, our san­i­ty and our hearts. It min­imis­es the con­cern over oth­er peo­ple's opin­ions of us, our choic­es and our ac­tions. It frees us from the pas­sive ex­pec­ta­tion of oth­ers to make us feel wor­thy, ca­pa­ble and ful­filled. A healthy self-love al­lows us to love more pas­sion­ate­ly, live more ful­ly and move more con­fi­dent­ly in the di­rec­tion of our dreams. Do you have old sto­ries, false per­cep­tions, lin­ger­ing guilt and shame that make it dif­fi­cult to love your­self? Ac­ti­vate these four prin­ci­ples and learn to love your­self again.