Fall in love with yourself first.

And I don’t mean in the cheesy “take yourself out to the mall and blow your money on bath salts and body lotion and new clothes” because that can only take you a few days.

Fall in love with your curiosity, your drive to find out what’s going on in a loved one’s brain, your motivation to seek truth, the very thing that sets life changes in momentum.
Fall in love with your hands, and with them admire the things they make, the people they touch, the power they give you to take care of your body.
Fall in love with your goals—and, whether you carry them out or not, admire them for what they are—your passion in the form of tangibility, the stuff that legends are made out of.
Fall in love with your ability to love, your own unique combination of empathy, thoughtfulness, and admiration of beauty. Know that if love was visible, yours would be a giant array of stars.
Fall in love with the way in which your body works like clockwork—your sleeping habits, your eating habits, the way  your body tells you it wants to keep you safe.
Fall in love with the way you kiss, the way you sigh, the way you keep your secrets. Fall in love with the way you decorate, your taste in food, the way your subconscious works your innermost thoughts into your sleep. Fall in love with your handwriting, the way you sing, the way you doodle in notebooks. Fall in love with your preferences, your growing encyclopedia of memories, the way you catalog admirable traits in others.

And I don’t say any of this because I think you’d be undeserving of love if you didn’t see yourself in this way, or that love wouldn’t eventually find you, or that you’d never be able to be happy. Because, truthfully, I think we are all capable of finding love in ourselves in one way or another.
But, as short as life is as we know it, can you seriously look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t like this to happen at your own hand? It is not selfish to want to experience yourself alone; it is not selfish to share the gift of you with yourself.

It’s not that you’d be undeserving of someone else’s love, but rather that you are deserving of your own.

Fall in love with yourself first.