Do you know who your harshest critic is? Chances are, your harshest critic is you!
We tend to believe that we won’t achieve our goals unless we are hard on ourselves, but is that genuinely true? Have you ever tried self-compassion and unconditional self-love? If so, have you tried them long enough to say with complete confidence that being hard on yourself works better?
My hope is that the following quotes will encourage you to love yourself more. There are more than enough people in this world that will criticize you as it stands, so it’s time to love yourself!
- “Sometimes the relationship you need to rescue is the one you have with yourself.” – Dr. Phil
- “I’ve finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be?” - Golden Hawn
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “We are always on our guard against contagious diseases of the body, but we are exasperatingly careless when it comes to the even more dangerous collective diseases of the mind.” – Carl Jung
- “Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.” – Robert Holden
- “When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.” – Joel Osteen
- “Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
- “A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.” – Ken Keyes.
- “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” – Oscar Wilde
- “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete” – Jack Kornfield
- “If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not able of developing compassion for others.” – Dalai Lama
- “It is not your job to like me – it’s mine.” – Byron Katie
- “I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent. They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.” – Dr. Kristin Neff
- “You’ve been criticising yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” – Louise L. Hay
- “Taking good care of yourself means the people in your life receive the best of you rather than what is left of you.” – Lucille Zimmerman
- “It has never been a crime to love yourself first. Neither is it a crime to love yourself more.” – Edmond Mbiaka
- “You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” – Yogi Bhajan
- “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
- “Loving yourself…does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion.” – Margo Anand
- “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.” – Barbara De Angelis
- “Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” – Lao-Tzu
- “Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” – Ram Dass
- “Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.” – Judy Garland
- “You cannot be lonely if you like the person you`re alone with.” – Wayne Dyer
- “Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.” – Christopher Germer
- “Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything. You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.” – Clark Moustakas
- “My life does not belong to others and I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations.” – Nathaniel Branden
- “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” – E.E. Cummings
- “The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding yourself into the personality you want to be. Learn to love yourself, be gentle with yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.” – Wilfred Peterson
- “Don’t Take Anything Personally. Nothings others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” – Don Miguel
- “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” – Patrick Rothfuss
Featured photo credit: pretty woman via pixabay.com
