Love is not only a feeling in your head, heart, soul, and mind. It’s a choice that you make every day. You have to choose to love yourself even on your hardest days. If you choose to love yourself no matter how hard things may be, it becomes easier to love another person if you are given the opportunity. No, I’m not only talking about loving your family just because they’re your blood relatives. I’m referring to the love that you extend to your friends and even your significant other. You have to learn to love yourself first way before you can love someone else.

Every day you are given opportunities to show love in many different ways. You can show love by doing the dishes for your family after a night of cooking when all you want to do is sit on the couch and watch TV. You can choose to love your older relatives by helping them clean their houses or apartment when they might be too old or too weak to take care of it themselves. You choose love when you take your older relatives into your house to care for them when they can’t take care of themselves anymore.

You can choose to show love to yourself by allowing yourself to take a much-needed break from your everyday activities, even if it means sleeping for half the day on a Saturday or a Sunday. You can order or make your favorite meal that you love and relax with a good book, or watch your favorite TV show or make yourself a bubble bath. Maybe you haven’t played video games in a while, and you want to get back to that. You can choose to love yourself by allowing yourself to have a day of relaxation each week in order to recharge. There is nothing wrong with taking a day to reconnect with yourself and the things that you’ve been missing. Especially if your life is hectic and stressful Remind yourself that it is okay to sit back and relax.

When you’re with someone else, you choose to love them every day too, even when they drive you crazy. Instead of focusing on the negative qualities or dwelling on their attitudes about certain topics, choose to embrace them in love no matter how hard it may seem. If they aren’t feeling well, make them something to cheer them up whether it’s food or tea. Straighten up the house while they rest, or just cuddle with them before you head off to work. Help them make sure that they’re getting enough nutrition in their bodies. Love means choosing to sacrifice other things in your day to care for them when and if they’re sick. Love is choosing to sacrifice watching a TV show that you wanted to watch, to let them watch theirs.

Love is choosing that person over and over, even in the hardest of times. When you stand by them through thick and thin, through both the good times and bad, it means that they can count on you for anything. Choosing love helps you realize how much good you’re capable of. It also helps you realize that love is better than any other thing in the world because it helps you practice selflessness instead of being selfish. It helps you feel good about helping others without expecting any reward for the things that you’re doing.

It’s choosing to do life with someone even when life gets difficult and sticking by them even if you may feel like giving up or running away. If you show love and loyalty to them, they will most likely show it back towards you. Love and loyalty are two things that are hard to find in this day and age. So never take anyone’s love and loyalty for granted. Love is also choosing to give them all that you have within you spiritually, emotionally and even physically.

It can be challenging at times, but it is also very rewarding too. It means compromising with each other, sacrificing things for each other and talking to each other.  It’s turning off your phones to focus on what they’re saying and giving them your undivided attention even when you want to be doing something else like watching TV.

If you let them speak their mind, then they will feel more appreciated and loved by you. When you give them your undivided attention, they will give you theirs when it’s your turn to talk too.

Love is a choice that you make every day, whether it’s subconsciously or even if it doesn’t come naturally to you.