Beginning with the universal loving kindness practice

I have already noted in a previous post that it is difficult for me to perform visualization practices. However, repeating phrases over for ten minutes is probably harder, it is hard for me to maintain my focus because other thoughts come into my head quickly and I have not yet mastered control of them. I think that it is important for me to gain a quiet mind before coming to this practice, and this would involve mindfulness practice then incorporating the loving kindness practice in the same session. When I lose focus on this, I can then return to a mindfulness practice to retain the stillness, kind of going back and forth between the two in order to maintain focus. While I do feel caring and love for certain people in my life, I am not clear what my motivations are for this kind of love, because I have not gotten to the point where I feel true loving kindness for myself. This has always been a problem and I do feel that it is true that in order to truly love others you must first love yourself. Maybe the best thing for me to do is work on feeling loving kindness for myself first, then it might become easier for me to visualize this and project it to others in practice. Does this seem reasonable to anyone else?