A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. — Sharon Salzberg

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

Author: Sharon Salzberg

Insight: We often think self-love should come first—that we need to fix ourselves before we're worthy of connection with others. But that gets it backwards. Most people discover their own value by accident, through someone else's consistent attention. When another person remembers what you said last week, shows up when you're struggling, or laughs at your jokes, something shifts. You start to believe you're worth remembering, worth showing up for. The tricky part is that this works both ways. Being loved teaches you what love looks like when it's genuine and patient. But so does loving someone else. When you care for another person—really care, not just the surface version—you learn what tenderness requires. You learn to extend yourself. And those same muscles you develop caring for them? They work on yourself too. This reframes the whole self-care conversation. It's not about bubble baths and affirmations in the mirror. It's about letting yourself be in relationship—messy, uncertain, where you matter to someone and they matter to you. That reciprocal attention is actually how humans learn to value themselves. We're not wired for the solo journey toward self-love. We're built to reflect each other's worth back and forth until we finally start to see it in ourselves.

Source: Self-Love Is an Adventure, Not a Destination, The On Being Project, 2018