20 Easy Ways To Learn How To Love Yourself And How To Be Happy
Michael Green
Published Mar 17, 2026
Photo: getty
"Self-love requires you to be honest about your current choices and thought patterns and undertake new practices that reflect self-worth." —Caroline Kirk
If one more person told me to learn how to love yourself, I was going to levitate into the air and pull one of those impossible martial arts moves from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I was sick of it!
What the heck does "loving myself" mean? Were they talking about bubble baths, pedicures, and cucumber masks? It turns out there is so much more to learning how to be happy than just pampering ourselves. I found this out the hard way.
About a year and a half ago, I almost died after a bad breakup. I had devoted so much of my energy to making the relationship work that I had completely neglected my own needs, and had given away my power and my responsibility for happiness.
When I finally developed the courage to end an addictive and painful relationship, I had to live with the effects of lack of self-love.
I struggled to eat, sleep, or continue my daily functioning. I spent every waking hour to myself, trying to understand how and why I had gotten there. I had to know, because whatever it was, if I did not attend to it, this was going to be the end of the road for me. I knew it.
RELATED: 5 Reasons Why It Feels So Darn Hard To Love Yourself Sometimes
I made mixed media collages, journaled, watched The Notebook five more times, cried, and called up friends to keep me company while I ate my few bites each day. During this whole time, I found places in my story where I was not present to my own life, my body or my spirit. I was just there. I found the places where I had abandoned myself and then gotten mad at the other person for not meeting my needs.
The truth was, I did not have a big enough inner container to hold the love I so desired even if I received it, because my self-love tank had shrunk down to the size of a bottle cap. It finally became very clear to me that there was one core reason I had gotten there: I did not know anything about how to love yourself. This realization launched me into a relentless search for the meaning of self-love, internally and externally.
I found that self-love is a not a destination, it's a practice. It is like brushing our teeth. Self-love is a foundation on which we build a happy life. Without loving ourselves, we have nowhere to put the love or abundance that comes to us.
Not sure what it looks like to love yourself? Here is what I've learned.
