Hello, Welcome to the month of February. It is my desire that this month will be so better than last month for you; it will be more productive and peaceful. You’ll be in sound health and be favoured amongst your peers. [Can I hear an ‘Amen’].

This post was supposed to be up for last monday, but as a result of my indisposition, I couldn’t. Anyway, it can be said that this is the right time as we are ‘supposedly’ in the ‘month of love’. Whew! It is a very serious matter. Everywhere I turn, I see Valentine’s day-February 14, a gift for him, a gift for her……….the only place that is free of such adverts is my dreams. Personally, I do not have an issue with the ‘Valentine’s day concept’ and all. I just want to be a ‘self-love doctor’ for today.

So let me begin by asking: how much do you love yourself? It is amazing how people ‘unconsciously’ regard ‘self-love’ as less important to that of the ‘love between people’. I won’t try to define love neither will I be making reference to the accustomed ‘1 Corinthians 13’ definition. Self-love in my opinion, is a strong feeling of endearment of oneself. Though, self-love goes further than my personal definition, I guess that’s the simplest way I could put my words together.

Why do I think self-love is very key? [Self-love-SL] SL is the bedrock of any sphere of love. If your SL is low, it is not too far-fetched from being detected. The next time you want to check how much you love yourself, just take a look at how you view other people [this is one of the ways- a major one]. We live in a world where there are standards set, where you have to look a certain way or act a certain way in order for you to be accepted/worth listening to. This will never change; the standards will always be there. It is left for you and I to shut the standards out, and just love ourselves, and the major hurdle has been taken care of.

I believe the world will be a better place if we loved our own selves as we should. This love is one that should transcend the physical attributes of oneself. I just remembered the recent ordeal between Mary Konye and Naomi Oni, where Mary hurled acid in her friend’s face due to jealousy over her friend’s looks [I do not know the hidden details of this case, so I am making use of the known facts]. So from this scenario, I believe SL would have played a vital part and the outcome would have been different. When you love yourself in a manner that surpasses the love of the ‘obvious attractive features’, you get to recall that apart from the physical features, there are other features that you need to love about yourself.

Your intelligence, handicraft, hospitality, generosity, kindness and many more qualities that sets you apart. If I must be very honest, SL is a daily affair that has to be energised/enhanced. Because everyday you step out of your house, surf the internet, watch a movie, you will always find someone/people who you supposedly think/believe is ‘better than you’; we basically have to acknowledge/appreciate the features/qualities and try not to get into the envy/covet moment.

Oh dear! the amount of times that I’ve had that ‘moment’, when I wanted to be taller, have a smaller nose[pointed one sef!], have a different colour of fingernail, blah blah blah.. I can confidently say by HIS help, I have gone past this stage. Does this mean I do not have such moments again? Nah! I will be telling a lie if I say yes, I don’t have such moments, but it takes shutting those thoughts up and understanding that you need to love yourself because your persona is distinct from even the closest person to you. One danger of low SL is that you give another person the power to define you with their words and opinions.

It is time we rise above oppressing ourselves with the thoughts of ‘I wish I am like…’ and the imaginations of ‘If I were…..’. In this month and beyond, choose to love yourself, every single lil’ detail. When we choose to make this decision, it becomes easy to love another. The originator of ‘self-love’ is the Honourable king of love, God. He said, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself‘ not vice versa.

That sums it up- you can only give what you have. Loving yourself should never be underplayed!!

So let’s do something, rate your self love [10%-100%], how do you handle the ‘envy/covet moments’?