I Lied to Myself.
By Prerna Chandra ·
I would give the vibe of “mein apni favourite hoon.”
Spa days, good candles, and weekends filled with things that felt good. When life got heavy, I’d pivot to gratitude lists and affirmations, forcing my mind toward the light before it had a chance to sit in the dark. I thought that was self-love.
When I started coaching. And someone asked me a question I wasn’t ready for.
“When did you last disappoint someone you love and not spend the next three days trying to fix it?”
That was the moment I realised I hadn’t been loving myself. I had been managing myself. Keeping the surface smooth, staying likeable. And somewhere in between all of that, quietly beating myself up for every mistake, every wrong choice, every version of me that didn’t measure up.
Underneath all of it? I was still waiting. For the text back. For the approval. For someone to confirm what the voice in my own head refused to believe that I was enough. The candles weren’t self-love. They were a distraction. And the affirmations? They were just me trying to drown out a critic who had been living rent-free inside me for years.
Real self-love is tough. And it is not aesthetically pleasing.
It is saying no to someone you love and not chasing them with an explanation. It is feeling the anxiety, the guilt, the loneliness, and not immediately reaching for your phone to make it stop. It is pausing before you say yes and asking yourself honestly: do I actually want this, or do I just not want the discomfort of saying no?
It is resting without earning it first. Crying without understanding why. Forgiving yourself for the thing you’ve replayed a hundred times and still haven’t let go of. Choosing your needs on a Tuesday with no one watching and no story to tell about it later.
And at some point, sitting with the question that feels oddly terrifying: who am I when no one needs anything from me? When you start choosing yourself, people notice. Some will cheer. Some will go cold. Some will call it selfish.You will question yourself. You will want to go back to being easier, smaller, more available.
Don’t.
The people who love you will stay. The ones who only showed up for your agreeableness will exit, and it will hurt more than you expect.
Let them go anyway.
Some days self-love is just sitting with an emotion that feels unbearable and not running from it. No ritual. No reward. And some days you’ll slip. You’ll people-please, you’ll shrink, you’ll wait for validation again. That’s not failure. That’s just you — a work in progress (WIP).
But slowly, something shifts.
You stop needing the mirror to confirm it. You stop shrinking in rooms where you were always meant to take up space. You start recognising yourself outside of every role you play for others.
You just know. Not perfectly. Not permanently. But enough.