Elevating the Human Experience

Chapter 6Cultivating Self-Love and Self-Worth

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

—Malcom X

The cycle of self-love that leads to worth, and a sense of worth that leads to self-love, I call loving self-worth. It means loving yourself in your being, in your words, and in your actions. It means believing in your intrinsic worth because you exist before you do anything that resembles work. It means believing in your worth enough to tell yourself that you are worthy of love. And it means believing in the worth of your actions or work. But it starts with believing that you are worthy of love from yourself first, then, as though moving out in concentric circles, that you are worthy of love from the people around you in your personal as well as professional life, even when—or especially when—others seemingly withhold love.

Ever since my friend's exhortation to learn to love myself, I have been on the hunt for learning what that could possibly mean. Understanding it intellectually was the equivalent of understanding the words written here on this page. Experiencing it was a whole other thing. I was curious to know, what was the secret? How would I be? What would I say? How would I act if I acted as though I were worthy of love from myself? What would I find if I was willing to start on the journey and move through the pain I would inevitably find? How do we learn from our Black colleagues and friends to be our own hype? ...