Integritus Prime

Learning about self-love is an ongoing process for most of us. For me, self-love was never talked about during childhood and most of my adult life. Often, religious teachings and traditional beliefs provide the rules and guidelines for how to live. Sadly, they often fall short.

Self-love is foundational. Without it, we suffer as if we are giving from a bleeding cup.

Those of us who do not conform to social norms are frowned upon or ostracized. What people forget to do is to look at the harm these norms can cause. We tend to follow what everyone else did or told us was the ‘right thing’ to do. Peer pressure is hard to fight, because we are wired to belong.

However, when it comes to self-love there are certain social norms that need to be looked at with new set of eyes. Two very common examples are selfless care giving and patriarchal norms. In Fiji, and in many other countries, these two social norms are generally accepted without question.

1. Care giving, especially in the home environment is generally a woman’s job. Cringing yet? Cooking, doing dishes and laundry, keeping the house clean and looking after children and sick family members are just some of the care giving duties expected of women to this day. Usually, there is no respite for women and it’s a daily task, especially if the women do not have work outside of the home. Does anyone ever realize that these women need a break to take care of themselves? How can they practice self-love or even self-care when they are on call all the time? Who else is ever on call all the time? If they ask for time off, they are called selfish. Eventually, women either live in a state of constant resentment, or burn out and have a breakdown. This is mostly due to depletion of energy. How can we love anyone well when we have no time to love ourselves? The situation is worse if the women are working outside of the home as well.

2. Patriarchy is an excruciatingly challenging norm to address as most of the time, due to tradition and conditioning; women support and enforce it just as much as men. Patriarchy usually accepts that men are superior to everyone else; hence they can use women and other vulnerable people for their own purpose. This traditional belief is re-enforced by most religious teachings. We forget that humans and mostly men wrote these religious books and they are the ones who benefit most from this norm. But, men suffer too, because patriarchy conditions them to be stoic, never cry, and bottle emotions until they become ill.

If we love ourselves, we need to challenge these norms by assigning time for self-care and self-love. Slowly pushing back on the expectations of others, building a community of like-minded people, supporting and encouraging each other by setting an example of self-love are important steps.

There are many ways to build a practice of self-love that challenges social norms. Here are 9 of them you can use to start challenging norms, especially patriarchy:

1. Question everything including the reason why these norms exist, who benefits from them and why some segments of the community suffer because of them.
2. Educate yourself and be open to growth. Times, attitudes and people change so stake stock of your own practice of social norms and see if there is room for improvement.
3. Challenge gender roles and help people to not put men and women into boxes, ignoring those who do not fit in.
4. Respect all expressions of gender as everyone has a right to live in love.
5. Support healthy norms that do not create or invite abuse or other forms of harm.
6. Stop demonizing men. They may be suffering due to the same norm where they are expected to bottle up their emotions and always be stressed because they feel they have to shoulder the entire burden as providers.
7. Ask for accountability. For those who wield power, it’s important to be accountable for these norms. Create an environment where people are aware of the effects of social norms.
8. Support marginalized groups. Help create supportive and safe networks for them.
9. Promote inclusivity. Focus on inclusive and enlightened communities. Celebrate empathetic and empowering leaders and mentors. 

There are many ways to challenge social norms that harm the vulnerable. Discuss with us the ways that you cultivate a practice of more self-love for a safe, fulfilled, and inclusive life.