Introspection and self awareness are prerequisites to love yourself. Or, at least, to become someone you can love.
Loving yourself means you have acknowledged your weaknesses. Whether or not you strengthen them, it enables you to empathize with others as their own weaknesses manifest.
The world becomes much more cozy once you realize others are not much different than you.
Hot take perhaps, I don't really agree with this. It's the same tired "worth by self work" claim that is given for all kinds of personal issues. I won't claim that it's strictly false (obviously working on yourself is beneficial), but it's disappointingly and frustrating reductive.
A lot of (most?) people get some sort of self love more or less by default, not because they are necessarily super self aware, but because their upbringing fostered that. They're emotionally normal and well adjusted. You don't have to be a philosopher to love yourself.
For those of us that did not get appropriate love in their upbringing, or even learnt self hatred, we will spend significant time down the track learning acceptance. That's when you need a lot of self awareness, because you will need to uproot a lot to move towards a more helpful emotional system.
I'll be honest, I can't say that awareness of my weaknesses has in any way made it easier to love myself. If anything, the constant gnawing awareness of the many qualities I lack makes it harder.
I think it can also be the other way around - self love leads to willingness to introspect and to be self-aware - because you love yourself, so of course you care enough to pay attention. If you think you’re worthless or broken, why bother waste time digging into yourself to find out who you are and why you do the things you do, what you really want? What benefit could there be - as a matter of fact, couldn’t there only be the risk of pain?
Knowing yourself to know, and forgive / accept, who and what you are.
Allows you to appreciate the perceptiveness of others when they're correct.
Also, if you do not know yourself (and especially if you cannot forgive yourself) you're going to struggle to deal with your own children.
My kids reflect me back at myself in what were frustrating ways, until I realised it was me and my influence, and it became massively endearing.
Although I may be too forgiving of myself (but in amongst that I do still have 'the voices of discontent' but the longer I live the more their sentiment is proven wrong).
Because English doesn't have precise terms for love I feel we should use it less. I think here you're talking about self acceptance which seems to me more correct because self love can also mean narcissism
Loving yourself means you have acknowledged your weaknesses. Whether or not you strengthen them, it enables you to empathize with others as their own weaknesses manifest.
The world becomes much more cozy once you realize others are not much different than you.