I Like People Who Smell Like I Want, I Can And I Deserve It

People with a humble soul and a brave heart captivate. It attracts those who do not give up, it inspires those who are clear about their path no matter how many barbed wire will rise in their path. Above all, we like those personalities who do not know surrender, and who at one point did: they learned to love themselves.

If it is valuable to have friends and family with this type of profile and attitude, it is even more important to become one of those people ourselves, the kind that smells like I want, I can and I deserve it. Now, if this society often allows us to glimpse something, it is that whoever dares to say this same phrase aloud will be guilty of a certain narcissism.

Loving yourself is possibly the most valuable root of our psychological well-being. This dimension is, neither more nor less, the one that guarantees our survival, both physically and emotionally. It is also this affection that allows us to cope with more or less success with the ups and downs of our life and of this complex society, which has at least as many contradictions as we do.

However, sometimes we have the clear feeling that “loving” oneself, saying out loud that we are worthy and capable of anything, is little more than an exacerbated act of bad taste. In the eyes of many we run the risk of being pedantic, selfish and of course, narcissistic.

Let’s think: being altruistic, noble and humble is something good and even necessary, but to have adequate psychological health it is necessary to invest in those other dimensions that are sometimes neglected: self-respect, self-confidence, self-love, personal dignity …

The healthy narcissism that we sometimes neglect

The word “narcissism” already causes us a certain rejection as soon as we hear it. However … what if we told you that there is a healthy side that we all need in some way? As curious as it may seem, each of us came into the world with the need to love ourselves “factory installed”, it is like a genetic program that later and for many different reasons, we end up taking them to the recycling bin or handcuffing and gagging so that we are not embarrassed.

To understand it better, we only have to think of babies and children of 3 or 4 years old. In their behavior is inscribed a network of essential narcissism that exclusively seeks that their basic needs, whether physical or emotional, are satisfied. They do not do it out of selfishness, they do it first to survive and then as part of their earlier psychological and social development.

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• The first, that the child comes to think, through the interaction experienced with his environment, that he is unworthy of receiving love. His emotional needs are not satisfied and little by little he falls into a spiral of self-degradation where his self-esteem is completely destroyed. If you understand that others don’t love you, you won’t love yourself either

The second aspect is just as negative, we speak of exacerbated narcissism, of course, where the child develops an extreme need to seek the attention and praise of the adult. You need that external, persistent and continuous reinforcement to feel validated and to gain power. Little by little, and as he grows, this practice will continue to be his main need: he will always seek to be the center of attention and his only concern will be himself.

• Finally, and in the healthiest version, we have the child or the  “pre-adolescent” who has been able to preserve that healthy narcissism where understanding that loving oneself is essential for survival. Thus, little by little, instead of demanding constant attention and that reinforcement of his environment to feel validated, he has managed to develop a strong self-esteem with which to feel capable, to know himself worthy, brave and deserving of achieving what he wants.

On the other hand, something curious that we cannot forget is that, according to neuroscience, that area of ​​our brain where our vital goals are gestated and programmed is the orbitofrontal cortex. This structure, in turn, is closely linked to the emotional plane, but above all to that type of firm and strong personality that understands habits, persistence and personal effort.

All this shows us once again, that And no, at no time will they care what others say, because the energy for success always resides within oneself, in that private corner that we must take care of on a daily basis. People with these characteristics are well worth being in our lives.

Images courtesy Liz Clemens.