Do you need to love yourself to succeed?

This morning I discovered this amazing interview with Miuccia Prada via one of those meandering internet ‘strolls’ you can take by following one link to another, so kudos to The Sartorialist for this one.

You can find an excerpt below if you choose not to read the whole article; however you may be surprised to find out about Prada’s communist beginnings and alternative points of view. 

Excerpt

Reporter: ‘How important is it for people to love themselves? I mean women.”

Miuccia Prada: “Now that you ask me, I ask myself.” “What do you think?”

Reporter: “I think it’s overrated.”

Miuccia Prada: “Bravo!” “This is great. This is something I can tell my friends. What a liberation. You can hate yourself!”

This dialogue completely astounded me as I believe that every human being needs to love themselves in order to be successful in life. When I say success I do not mean a great career, but I mean contentment with yourself and the people in your life. Am I wrong?

It’s a cliché to say you can’t love someone else until you learn to love yourself, but aren’t most clichés a cliché for a reason? In this case I definitely believe it to be true. From my own personal experience I only managed to have destructive relationships with other people until I began meditating and learnt to accept myself. That’s what love is, it’s an acceptance without bounds and when you love someone else you accept their faults too.

If we don’t accept our own faults and are always striving for perfection (which doesn’t exist; we are human, we err), aren’t we on a never ending treadmill of craving and desire? We fulfil one desire and immediately move onto the next? Or worse, we fail in fulfilling our desires and hate ourselves. If you hate yourself then you view the world through a perspective of hate, after all we only have our own eyes with which to see the world.

How do you see yourself and does this reflect on your vision of the world around you, and your success in it?