You may ask yourself, what is self love? Why is it so important, why would I need it? Self love is a very important step in finding yourself, it helps you find companionship, self love can even make you a happier more confident version of you. Self love is defined by the dictionary as the instinct by which one’s actions are directed to the promotion of one’s own welfare or well-being.

“Self love is accepting who you are and who you are not, accepting your flaws and that you are beautiful on the inside and out. You don’t need to rely on others to tell you, you just know that deep down in your heart that that’s who you are, and that you are beautiful,” senior Macey Jenkins said.

Self love to me is excepting you for who you are, loving yourself to the extent that you know your worth and what you deserve. I believe that self love is very important, especially for young women and men. From personal experience loving yourself is a major key to success, when you love yourself you know your worth and what’s best for you and I believe that 100 percent. When I began to focus on myself and learned to love who I am as an individual, I saw more clearly who was bringing me down and what I needed to do to be happy and successful. The difference between being conceited and loving yourself is clear, the definition of conceited in the dictionary is, excessively proud of oneself; vain. Conceited is being arrogant, rude, stuck up, and the polar opposite of self love. Self love comes from a growth of oneself, not from a place of self-centeredness.

Jazzy Johnson is a junior at East High, you could call her a self love advocate. When thinking of self love, Jazzy is for sure one of the first students to come to mind. Johnson is a very outspoken, confident, young woman who a lot of other young women and men look up to. Self love to Johnson is just knowing that you’re beautiful and to not care about what anyone else thinks of it. Her advice for other young women and men who are learning to love themselves is to just simply do what makes you happy.

“People are haters, and if you love yourself you won’t care about what anyone else says and will just do whatever makes you happy no matter what other people’s opinion is,” Johnson said.

Kayla O’Connor is a Health and Relationships teacher and has been for seven years. O’Connor is also the advisor of Movement 515, a poetry/spoken word group throughout all DMPS schools. She is seen as a poet mentor. O’Connor is a very loud, unapologetic, opinionated, confident woman who you could call the epitome of self love. O’Connor’s definition of self love was having positive feelings about who you are as a person. Self love was said to be important in her opinion because it is the first step towards accepting love from anyone else. She stated that in order to love anyone else or to accept love from anyone else you have to at least like or love who you are as a person. She also talked about how she believes it helps a lot with confidence, that people with confidence are less likely to fall into negative patterns, and peer pressure because they are confident in who they are as a person.

“Self love is like a pre-requisite, you cannot take Algebra II without taking Algebra I. Just like you can’t accept love from anyone or give love properly without knowing how to love yourself,” O’Connor said.