I think that love is always for someone or something outside yourself. It draws you out towards another. So, you can't really love yourself properly speaking. You can however accept yourself for who you are, in spite of your flaws, which is like love. I imagine you do have to accept yourself somehow to love someone else. It seems that if you are never accepting of yourself it would be difficult to give or accept love. I don't mean you have to think you are awesome, but at least feel well enough to give and accept love. When we are young (and older) we really need someone to show us love first. Then we can see we are worthy of love, and can accept ourselves. This is why I find the "love yourself first" thing insulting. It's like a lot of easy, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, philosophies. First of all you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it's impossible. Then someone who hasn't had a particular problem tells you you either don't have that problem, or it's all your fault. As far as I can see people with low self esteem, including myself, don't want to love ourselves we want to be loved by others. I think we can learn to accept ourselves better, but not in isolation.