Loving yourself is integrity, not approval

In my book Why I Love, the practice for loving yourself is simple: I speak to myself the way I would speak to a friend, and I try things I have told myself I am not the kind of person for. When I am struggling, I treat myself with kindness instead of harsh criticism. And when I fail at something, I don't decide it was never my thing.

For years, I said terrible things about myself out loud in front of friends and family. I told people I was a failure and that I sucked, thinking it was a way to motivate myself. One day, a close friend looked at me and said one simple word: stop. That single word grounded me, and it made me realize that self-criticism wasn't pushing me forward—it was just disrespect.

After my burnout in my early twenties, I went online looking for what was wrong with me. I took a personality test, and the four-letter result felt like someone had read my private diary. But then an email arrived telling me I had the rarest type in the world, and in the next sentence claiming I was broken and that they could fix me. I realized I was swinging between two false traps: either I was a special prodigy destined to save the world, or a broken misfit who belonged nowhere.

Neither of those stories lets you be an ordinary human being who is simply tired and needs rest. For years, whenever something got difficult, I used personality labels to make excuses. At fifteen, I said math was just not my thing, and later I said programming was not for me because I was people-oriented. Today, I design enterprise software systems for a living and love logical puzzles, because I stopped letting a past story dictate my capacity.

Whenever you fail at something, you don't get to decide it was never your thing. Declaring something "not for me" has cost people more potential than any real lack of talent. Today, if there is something I struggle with, I don't say I dislike it—I say I haven't met the version of myself that understands it yet.

Real self-love is about integrity, not superficial approval. You don't have to like every single flaw about yourself, but you have to stop lying to yourself about what you can do. Every time you hide behind a psychological label or an excuse, you treat yourself as someone who cannot handle reality.

Try these two practical things this week. First, the next time you catch a harsh critical sentence starting in your head, say the word stop out loud. Second, write down one activity you declared "not your thing" before you were twenty, and try it once without needing to be good at it. You can pre-order Why I Love through the link below; what is one label you are ready to let go of?