The 10 Unusual Commandments of Self-Love

Also how you may be confusing self-love with self-hate

I.

Heard of self-love? I’m sure you have. Everybody talks about self-love nowadays. The concept’s successful invasion of popular culture is recent. Our forefathers and mothers spent most of their time fighting for survival, foraging for food, protecting their tribes, raising children or defending their country. A good life back in those days was one that was lived in service of others. Loving oneself was perhaps not even thought about, let alone talked about. Our grandparents ate to live, walked to commute, married to have children and inherited to bequeath. The self mattered to the extent that it was needed to keep somebody’s DNA alive. 

Fast forward to 2023, the self has become an entity deserving of its own space, freedom and immense 'love'.  This is great, especially in this day and age. The Insta-worthy-seeming lives of our many friends and influencers make our own lives often look dull and mundane in comparison. We feel embarrassed at what we do, how we think, who we hang with and who we date. Advocates of self-love are right in that we need to be able to love ourselves even when the world makes us think that we may not be deserving of any. But there seems to be some major confusion in people’s minds on what self-love looks like in action. Here is an example of how some of us implement the new decree on self-love:

II. 

You have had a long week at work. Lots of meetings, barely eating, friction with the boss, dealing with complaining customers - you are exhausted by the time you step out of the building on Friday. You reach home, lose your bag and collapse into that giant bean bag. You can finally relax. You pull out your phone, your fingers automatically find and open Netflix. You are instantly shown where you left off. You start watching while having dinner on the side. Afterwards, you climb into bed whilst the show keeps you company until you eventually nod off, the characters from the show transitioning from your screen to your dreams. It’s a weekend, so you sleep till noon the next day. You have breakfast for lunch, make plans to go drinking in the evening with some friends. It’s okay to go a little crazy, you think. I have a holiday tomorrow. So you go a little crazy on Saturday night. You wake up on Sunday feeling like a zombie, dehydrated of fluids and energy. You saunter around the house, stay away from all sources of bright light and loud noises and spend the day in recovery. Before you know it, it’s Monday, time to get back to the grind. A colleague asks you how your weekend was and you tell them that you took some time out for yourself and chilled with some friends later. And they say - “Nice, good for you!”. 

I’m confused because I am not sure which one of the many awful activities you engaged in during the weekend did you categorise as me-time, self-love etc. Was it the Netflix bingeing on Friday? Or waking up at noon on Saturday? The evening boozing? The Sunday spent away from the sun and humans?

III. Pop-psych and self-love

Our idea of self-love is tightly tied to the idea of consumption. I know people who spend way beyond their means on creams, moisturisers, bags and what not in the name of self-love. A friend of mine once told me, “It’s silly but every time I feel angry with my partner, I go shopping and it makes me feel better. It is my way of showing myself love.” 

I know people (and this includes myself) who consume content foolishly in the name of self-love. I have worked so hard, I have earned me some Instagram time. Or take the example of people who go on very strict diets. Eating all kinds of fried, fatty junk on a Sunday or their scheduled cheat day is what they would associate with self-love. 

Slippages, recklessness, mindless consumption, conscious cheating, these have become synonymous with the idea of loving oneself. How twisted! And what’s worse is that the idea seems to be fast spreading, thanks to pop psychology.

Pop-psych tells us that indulgence is self-love - eating that last slice of pizza, sleeping in, skipping gym, binge watching, having one too many desserts. We are told to allow ourselves these indulgences and severely scolded by our pop-psych-loving wellwishers when we express guilt for indulging. Don’t you dare feel guilty for being happy! 

If these indulgences are indeed supposed to foster self-love and lifelong happiness, why do we not feel like successes afterwards? Why do we instead feel like crap after spending 4 hours on Youtube? Why are we left with a lingering sense of regret when we skip gym? Why do we not feel a sense of accomplishment after staying up all night to finish the last season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Why do we feel dissatisfied after eating that 5th cupcake? 

IV. Self-love is really about self-work

Exercising is self-love. Sleeping for 8 hours is self-love. Fighting the impulse to binge on anything is self-love. Even small wins against our impulses make us feel capable and allow us a sneak peek into this thing we supposedly possess called will power. Regaining focus and attention towards life feels incredible and is in my opinion, what is truly representative of self-love. Consuming mindlessly is not self-love no matter how ferociously popular proponents of self-love try to defend the behaviour. 

In the name of self-love, popular psychology tells us to spend ludicrously, consume incessantly and hate viciously. But is that really the way we want to love ourselves? Is buying yet another hand cream going to elevate your self-worth? Is staying up till 3am to finish watching Ultimatum how you care for yourself? (I did this recently and no, I did not feel cared for) 

I hear people who are desperately trying to fight obesity being told to embrace their body. I am not talking about unhealthy body standards or size zero obsessions here. I am talking about folks who are struggling with serious health issues because of excess body weight (and not because of a medical condition) so much so that even a flight of 10 steps leaves them gasping for air and clutching their chests. 

If a pop-psycher finds anybody within their 1km radius so much as mention weight, they are labelled as politically incorrect and stand a high risk of cancellation. And I get it. We want to protect our friends. We don’t want others to hurt the people we care about. We want a world where everybody is seen as beautiful and wholly accepted regardless of their quirks, idiosyncrasies, colour or body weight.

What we don’t realise is that telling an overweight person to embrace their overeating impulses is like telling a person with diabetes to give into their urge to have sugar. It can be a fatal kind of self-loving.

I know this is not what any of us want to hear but self-love is really about self-work. As much as it is about caring for ourselves, it is also about taking responsibility for ourselves. One way to understand how self-love relates to self-work is to take a slightly extreme example - say someone who is trying to quit smoking. 

Smoking is bad, it causes cancer. A critical self-love activity that a smoker ideally should engage in is the pursuit of quitting smoking. So what would a chain smoker attempting self-love look like? What would them battling the seemingly-indestructible urge to smoke every second of their post resolution life look like? It would look like a lot of work! It would look like trying to stay away from cigarettes. It would look like saying a weak, imperceptible no to a colleague who offers a smoke and walking away while your insides are screaming, “Yes!!!!”. It would look like breaking down on some days. It would look like failing, taking a drag in the bathroom, feeling disgusted with yourself and trashing that barely smoked cigarette. It will look like an infinite series of having to say no again and again to the thing that you want so badly until one day, you look back and realise (proudly) that it has been a year since you smoked your last cigarette. That is self-love. You would not think that telling a smoker who is struggling to quit that he should embrace his love for cigarettes is a good idea, would you?

Apply this to situations that masquerade as less consequential decisions in our lives. Mindless consumption of Youtube shorts, Instagram reels, Netflix shows, Prime comedy, Hotstar serials, junk food, sugar, porn, celebrity gossip, impulse shopping, trashy novels - they don’t seem like it but they are all their own brand of cigarettes. They give you cheap dopamine and keep you hooked on it. If you want to indulge in them, sure go ahead, but please don’t disguise them as attempts at self-love. They are not. If someone leads you to believe otherwise, they are wrong too. 

It is unfortunate but almost nothing good in life comes easy. One of the few things that I used to hold onto in life was the joy of taking a warm shower until I discovered that cold showers are better for you, especially in the mornings. Even a shower has easy and difficult levels and of course - the difficult level is better for you. 

It is easier to click on ‘Buy Now’ on Amazon than to let that money stay in your bank account or still better, to invest it. It is easier to eat that McChicken you ordered than give it away or trash it. It is easier to disappear into your room than to get out and talk to people. It is easier to watch reel after reel on Instagram than to quit the app and write that blog. It is easier to take the recommendations that Youtube offers you than spend that time with your parents. But that is what self-love is. It is not easy and in its own convoluted way, it was never meant to be. 

V. Does that mean that self-love is all work and no play?

Relaxation is also self-love, no doubt. But how you relax matters. Spending your 2 hard earned days of rest at the end of every week watching trash and eating junk is not the model of self-love that you may want to pursue if you are indeed chasing happiness.

Connecting with friends, spending time with family, watching a movie with your partner (different from binge watching by yourself till 3am), playing with your dog, hydrating, grooming your plants, personal grooming, doing a chore, a walk in the park, reading for pleasure – these are all fantastic ways to rest and they leave you feeling replenished, rested and recovered after a strenuous work bout.

Even doing nothing can be self-love. Sitting in your balcony with a cup of tea, meditating, eating a meal with no screen accompaniments, talking to your partner without your eyeballs violently oscillating between your phone and their face, having a coffee with a friend in a wifi-bereft cafe are all great for your mental and physical health. They might not always feel like it but they will leave your body and mind feeling energised and cared for.

Consumption if done mindfully can also be a form of self-care. But we have to be extra vigilant while doing this. Buying a lip balm that you know will make a difference to how dry and chapped your lips often feel is different from spending hundreds of dollars on cosmetics that are going to stay on your bathroom shelf or dressing table until they get expired and chucked into the bin. Same goes for content. Watching a stand-up by an artist you enjoy in a fixed time you've intentionally set aside is different from scrolling for hours through random, unfunny shorts.

VI. 

I know that everything that I have described as self-love here sounds more like self-hate. I have said this in the past - I struggle with this stuff myself too. I procrastinate, I love to Gram my way out of troubles, I read to escape, I watch to forget, I eat to feel good. But I don’t believe the world when they tell me that it’s okay and I think they are wrong when they tell me that I should let it slide in the name of self-love. I think you should start questioning some of these popular tropes around self-love too.

We need to start loving ourselves the way we would love another. Erich Fromm once wrote about productive love and how it encapsulates a variety of attitudes - that of care, active concern, responsibility and respect. As much as our love for our partner or friend or child might blind us, we also possess a remarkable ability to help them grow and sometimes that means not giving into all their wishes, fears and anxieties. It also means having to call them out on their dangerous follies. Loving another person is an active job as we would have all experienced in our many kinds of relationships. But somehow when we extend the same love to our own selves, we replace genuine love with a fake kind. We hijack our own growth and accept defeat easily. We transform to self-destructive rust.

As somebody who grew up steeped in Indian values and raised in the throes of collectivism, I value individualism. I often err on the side of overestimating the importance of self in the world. Yes, we are our parent’s children, the country's citizens, somebody’s wife, a company’s intern, a manager, a mother, a dad and all the other roles that we need to fulfil to keep the economic and social machinery of our worlds going. But we are also our own selves today. We are expected to have an identity outside of our work and biological family. We are asked to  - ‘Put yourself first’, ‘Show yourself some love’.  

But we struggle with loving ourselves the way we deserve. The least we can do is to not lie when we fail to show up for ourselves. Like many before me have said, the first step to change is acceptance. If you are one of those people in denial using language and the power of pop-psychology to disguise your self-sabotaging behaviour to look good on paper, you need to step up and call a spade a spade. And hopefully, that becomes the first of the many steps that you will take on the long and arduous journey towards being able to truly love yourself. If you are one of those people who prefer more direction than this, then here you go, the 10 Unusual Commandments of Self-Love:

1. I shall sleep on time everyday

2. I shall eat on time everyday

3. I shall exercise everyday

4. I shall get at least a few minutes of sunlight every morning

5. I shall not check my phone the first thing every morning

6. I shall not engage in cheap dopamine

7. I shall not steal my own time

8. I shall treat my rest days as rest days, not consumption tornadoes

9. I shall prioritise long-term goals over short-term pleasures

10. I shall spend time with the people I love

A thought I had while writing this: Imagine any of our nation’s freedom fighters coming back home after a long day of freedom fighting and watching Netflix to unwind and relax. Instead of eating a hot meal and going to sleep in preparation for all the marching and civil disobedience they would have to do the next day, what if they stayed up all night watching trash and eating junk? I can’t help but feel that India might have still been under British rule if my forefathers had not gotten their self-love strategy right. Had they chosen Netflix over whatever little sleep they could get, I would have been doomed. Is it possible that our allegedly less advanced, more collectivistic ancestors understood self-love much better than we seem to? Maybe the answer to how to love ourselves lies in the dreams that we think are worth fighting for and organising our entire being around it.