I need to Honor Myself

I was listening to a podcast called Meditative Story when I couldn't sleep a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes, I'm able to fall back to sleep after listening to an episode because of the calm voices and quiet music. It's just really relaxing. Anyways, one episode really stuck with me. The guest said, "I need to honor bravery in myself so I can honor the bravery in others." She was recalling a time in her life that she had never realized required large amounts of bravery. When she said this, something clicked. If we take out the word bravery, we can replace it with nearly anything. One version that stuck with me was, "I need to honor myself so I can honor others." Could we ever know how to respect others or treat others with kindness if we don't do the same for ourselves? The answer is no! Think about it like this. If I see an Olympic gymnast win a match with ease and win a gold medal, I'm going to think that they're pretty amazing. However, I've never attempted to run a marathon or to win a gold medal. There's no way that I could properly understand everything they went through from training to endurance to effort to money to time to everything else in between unless I, too, trained and won a gold medal in the Olympics. I would still appreciate their skill if I didn't train. If I did train and compete, first, I would never make it even near the Olympics and then I would celebrate the victory of someone else on a completely different level. I would be able to truly physically and mentally understand exactly how difficult it was for that individual to succeed. With that new understanding, I would be that much more impressed and in awe of their accomplishment. Let me clarify what I mean. Self-love is a difficult journey that we travel upon our whole life. If we do not love ourselves, we cannot healthily and happily love others. It's that simple. Being able to comprehend the struggle to properly love oneself, gives us the necessary empathy to authentically love. For me, personally, I have days when I don't love myself as much. This could cause me to be used as a doormat―loving oneself includes how one allows themselves to love other people. It hurts to hurt people. Loving myself on these days comes more naturally when there are other people encouraging me to do so. And of course, they are not going to be able to do so until they love themselves. This circular reasoning is what keeps relationships healthy and happy and together. This is why I am so grateful for how supportive my friends are. I'm working on honoring my strength and emotional endurance, right now. Without an appreciation for my own strength, I would be blind to the fact that I am surrounded by some of the emotionally fittest people I know. Honoring this is like opening my eyes for the first time. Once I see strength in myself, I can't help but see it in others. The world may be full of weak and unkind people but I am not one of them and I refuse to blind myself to the strong people surrounding me. Once I see myself, I can see others, too. Maybe there is hope after all :)