Despite 10 million hashtags under the name of self-love on Instagram, we have gotten it wrong. We still feel that acts of choosing yourself first and self-love are selfish.
It is the intent that matters.
By the way, on a totally separate note–Did I share with you all that recently I opened a food cafeteria?
I was sitting there one day, and a person came asking if I sell coffee machines–I said NO.
Next, another person asked if I sold jeans. My brain went numb, and I tried not to say any cuss words that my mother wouldn’t approve of.
But that got me thinking…..Why am I blaming other people?
Am I doing something wrong? Am I not making it clear to people about my brand and the services I offer?
Then it struck my mind that I just started from scratch and didn’t do any branding for the place as yet. My stall banner had a picture of a coffee machine and a girl.
That was my “AHA” moment as the nuggets of wisdom I got changed my life.
The best of brands do that too by using a certain brand palette, vision and philosophy and don’t miss a chance to promote it, and create their own characteristics. They practise that themselves.
A Nike CEO will never wear Puma shoes – as he believes in the product created by his company.
Similarly, you have to believe in yourself and practice the virtues you expect from others. You have to treat yourself with the utmost love and respect if you wish others to do that for you. The way you treat and show yourself, creates your identity and that emits through and reflects your personal brand. In other words, how you treat yourself defines the way your brand(you) will be perceived by others.
If you as an individual value fitness – you drink 4 L of water every day, workout regularly and avoid junk – people won’t dare to ask you to eat a 300 calorie cake on a random Tuesday.
When you practise your values yourself, people understand that and won’t ask you to do things against your brand.
Nike will never be asked for cars and Tesla for shoes.
The process of personal brand/identity creation starts with self-love.
Self love It’s you for you. It is not you against someone. Self-love is when you choose to put yourself first and decide to do things that benefit you. When you do something for yourself, sometimes the by-product of it can be that somebody else can get hurt.
Self-love isn’t as easy as attending a webinar on “how to love yourself ‘ on one Sunday afternoon and you walk out with the ability to love yourself. It takes time. It is a gradual process.
Self-love is the awareness of your own good habits and bad habits and what you would like to form in the future. When you are doing your healing, you work on your strengths and weaknesses, work on your triggers, learn new things about yourself, and discover your purpose in life.
Even when toxic people and bad things happen, you know how to handle it because you are so secure that you will be able to say no easily, be free from pleasing people and not take anyone else’s responsibilities. All the other things then happen Automatically!
Unfortunately, people have gotten it wrong for generations where they think – it’s you against the world. Essentially – you don’t need to practice saying “NO”, consciously filter out toxic people from life or need permission to choose yourself first – it all happens organically when your fundamentals about self-love are right.
So Nike doesn’t have to go and tell people they sell shoes – people know as they do the branding right – similarly positivity, assertiveness, and all self-loving things will come organically when you love yourself right.
It’s okay to not subscribe to the glossy, edited version of self-love that grace our Insta feeds. I want to let people know that it’s okay if your journey to knowing, understanding and accepting yourself doesn’t look like a tikTok trend.
