So here lies the key to self-love: realise your capacity to love anything and everything external, is a mere reflection of your love for yourself. In those friends, in pets, in family, in food, in materials, if you can love it, then you are really loving yourself. Passion expressed to yourself through a trust in the external, given the point that we choose our emotions, means that we apply that feeling of love to ourselves by ourselves. The difference is that we have a mostly hidden criteria for what we ‘require’ to happen before we extend that love to the self. So that leaves a couple options, we could invite all those external carriers in to fill up the room with plenty of opportunity for self-love or adjust the criteria and love yourself for simply being. All are worthy of that, whatever this plane says to otherwise.
Meditate.