Learning how to love yourself is a personal journey only you can experience. Loving yourself will help you in all aspects of your life. Check out these tips for self-love.
There is no pill or one-size fits all for learning how to love yourself. It is personal and different for everyone. Self-love isn’t selfish and it is the only way you can become the best version of yourself.
@zepolvisualarts
You Have To Love Yourself Before You Can Love Someone Else
Famous drag superstar, RuPaul says “If you can’t love yourself, how are you going to love somebody else?” There is a lot of truth behind this statement. When you love and accept yourself, it is much easier to love and accept someone else.
However, it is important to remember there is no finish line for loving yourself. Like all relationships there are ups and downs. As life goes one, we face new challenges we must overcome and our belief in ourselves can sometimes shake. Loving yourself before loving someone else means that you are putting your life slightly before theirs. Not at anyone else’s expense, but you are maintaining the relationship with yourself in order to be the best partner or friend.
We all have demons, history and baggage that come and go throughout our lives. Once you accept who you are, where you’ve been and are strong enough to continue the personal work, that’s when you can find love in others. The whole idea of loving yourself before someone else, really is all about being able to find love and kindness in yourself. Once you can find happiness alone, you’re ready to let others in.
@prophsee
How To Love yourself
There is no magic spell or quick fix to loving yourself. How you love yourself is different from how someone else loves themselves. It is 100% a personal journey and will change throughout your life. Here 20 tip on how to love yourself.
1. Be Kind To Yourself
This goes without saying. When you are kind to yourself and others it is much easier to be positive. However, this can be very difficult for many of us. It can be very easy to spiral into intrusive thoughts and engage with negative self-talk. Self-talk is that inner dialogue in our heads that can often times be our own worst enemy. It is important to build the habit of building yourself up, especially when that bad inner-voice comes on. Even if you don’t believe it at times, fake the positivity until you feel it.
2. Give Yourself Breaks
Take breaks from work, socializing and family time. Schedule a 5 minute break after every 2 hours of work, or take 5 if you’ve been hanging out with friends all day. This will help restore your energy, increase productivity and allow you to engage with the people around you. Take breaks from life to unwind, stretch or have a snack is self-care, self-love practice we all need to embrace more.
3. Change Your Attitude
How to love yourself 101, change your attitude and how you approach everyday life. If you are struggling with low self-esteem, self-worth, you are also struggling with negativity. You can change your attitude by:
- Setting realistic and achievable goals
- Relinquishing control (you can only control yourself)
- Use setbacks to improve (learn from your mistakes)
- Engage with positive people
- Forgive Others
- Say thank you
Additionally, changing your attitude is about changing your perspective. Think of perspective like a window with a view. When you change it, you’re getting a whole new view even if it’s a window in the same building.
4. Practice Gratitude
Thank the universe, thank yourself, thank your friends and family. Being grateful is a powerful way to change an attitude and shape your mind for the better. Get rid of self-pity and start giving thanks. The easiest way to practice gratitude is with a journal. Eventually you will start incorporating gratitude into your daily life, and it will become an efficient way to combat negativity. Every morning or evening write down things you are thankful and grateful for.
5. Become Of Service To Others
Being kind to yourself involves being kind to others. Sharing your love by volunteering or helping a friend will not only make them feel good, it’ll make you feel good! You can be of service to others in so many ways. Simply being a shoulder to cry on for a friend, helping someone move, donating food, money or your time. Do for others what you cannot do for yourself. Giving compassion and love to others will you open yourself up to receive even more in return.
6. Don’t Take Yourself or Life Too Seriously
When wondering how to love yourself, think about how you go into everyday. Stop for a second and re-access whether or not you’re being too serious. At the end of the day, a fulfilling and meaning full life shouldn’t be serious and upsetting. Taking things too seriously will narrow your view of understanding what’s important and valuable. It increases stress and anxiety which will make you less productive and focused. Additionally, seriousness will hinder you from understanding the people around you.
7. Positive Self-Love Affirmations
Start everyday with some words of encouragement. These present-tense, personal statements will help push you into the person you want to be. By visualizing and repeating statements like “I am worthy of love” or “I love my body”, your mind will believe that this is a fact. It’s a bit of a mind trick your playing on yourself. When you say things like that have already happened or are currently happening you are giving yourself the steps to make them a real reality. Incorporate affirmations into your everyday life and make them a habit.
8. Break Bad Habits
Some habits are good and some a really bad! How to love yourself requires breaking and letting go of these bad habits. Combat bad habits with good ones. Get into a routine of sleeping, showering and some exercise. Thank yourself and everyone around you. Avoid drugs and alcohol or other toxic vices. Lastly, reflect every single day. Reflecting will help you process and come to constructive solutions. In order to be the best you, you need to reflect on each day. What was good, what will be better, how you felt and any triggers.
9. Better & More Sleep
Sleep is so important to self-care and self-love. Without sleep you’re body and brain don’t work properly. You can become much more susceptible to negativity, anger, resentment and other harmful energies. Sleep not only improves your emotion state but your mental abilities as well. A good, proper nights rest increases motivation, energy, concentration and optimism.
10. Physical Activity
You can exercise in many ways that don’t involve running, crunches or even going to the gym. It is recommended you get 30 minutes of physical activity a day for overall health. Not only will you feel healthier, you’ll start to feel much better about yourself. Exercise releases those feel good hormones like endorphins that contribute to mood enhancement. Getting your blood pumping by walking, swimming or dancing will help reduce depression and anxiety symptoms. Work out at home, outside or at a gym, it doesn’t matter just get moving.
11. Go Out Alone
Being comfortable alone is a big part of how to love yourself. It can be intimidating at first but eventually you’ll begin to value your alone time. If you aren’t comfortable being alone with yourself, how can you love yourself or expect someone else to be alone with you? The only true person we can rely on, is ourselves. Happiness and self-love comes from within, nothing and no one else can make you happy. Go grab a drink and a snack with a good book or go for a nice bike ride. Engage with your thoughts and have conversations with yourself.
12. Embrace All Emotions & Feelings
Loving yourself is about accepting pain and sadness too. Life can’t be all roses and sunshine. We will endure many storms and events that will knock us off balance, but only we can restore ourselves. It is important to process every emotion, good and bad. We all have dark sides and have gone through things no one else can relate to. Don’t ignore these realities because it will cause resentment, anger and pain. Always focus on forgiving yourself, others and circumstances. Learn from mistakes and use them to guide you into a better, brighter future. Let go of trying to silence yourself and embrace everything you’ve felt and have been through.
13. Stop Trying To Fit In
If you are trying to fit in, you are wasting your time. There is only one you, so let that person shine! We are taught that in order to be happy we need to fit in and go with the flow. That is an absolute lie! Embrace what makes you unique in order to live as your true self. This can take a lot of time and practice. However, spending alone time can help you become the most authentic version of your self.
14. Share Yourself & Be Vulnerable
As you become more self aware and mindful, you’ll become more open to sharing yourself. Continuing the path of self discovery involves sharing your experiences and how you overcame obstacles with others. It can be uncomfortable being vulnerable, but progress only happens when we push ourselves out of the comfort zone. Embrace who you are and what you feel because it will lead to new insights and discoveries. It is important to remember that sharing doesn’t need to be broadcasting yourself to the world. Choose select people and let them in.
15. Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Stepping our of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be some crazy stunt like sky diving. Progress doesn’t happen in the comfort zone, therefore you have to experiment. Taking small steps will help you grow and make this progress. Write down activities that make you nervous, big or small. Then start doing those activities or tasks! Once you get through them, you’ll be full of confidence.
16. Limit Time Wasting Activities & People
As we progress and improve, many people in our lives may start to bring us down. Misery loves company, and even the ones we thought were close to us might question your new found self. These people have put you in a box and don’t want to see you change or become better than them. Additionally, limit people and activities who do not help you be productive, engaged or happy. Social media or drinking buddies don’t always add value into our lives.
17. Surround Yourself With Supportive People
Self-love and finding out how to love yourself comes back to who you surround yourself with. We are often influenced by who we spend our time with. If you aren’t being supported and positively influenced, you might need to cut the chord on some friendships.
18. Stop Judging Others
When we judge or say hurtful things about others, it is a projection of how we truly feel about ourselves. Like the saying “when you point a finger at someone else, you have 3 pointing back at you.” Saying or even thinking bad things about other people furthers the cycle of negativity, and bad self-talk. Combat this by giving compliments to others, accepting compliments or telling your inner voice to shut up.
19. Live In The Moment
“If you have one foot in the past, one foot in the future, your peeing on today” – Malachy McCourt
This isn’t the loveliest saying, but it certainly is true! Thinking too far ahead will give you anxiety and fixating on the past will give you depression. Enjoy your life right now by being present. You can only control yourself and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, so have fun right now!
20. Do What You Say You’ll Do
Stick to your guns and don’t look back. If you say you’re going to do something, do it! Even if it takes a while and you complete other goals first, always work towards what you want in life. Be proud of who you are, where you’ve been and take action. When people don’t follow through, they lose credibility and respect. Build credibility within yourself, learn integrity and get stuff done!
@anniespratt
Learning how to love yourself is a huge process. It is about constantly learning, reflecting and processing. There is not right way to go about it. The only thing that is for sure is that in order to be the best version of yourself, you need to start loving yourself. Give yourself some credit, live in the moment, do the things you love and tell yourself how great you are! Fake it till you feel it, because eventually you will. Life is too short, so embrace everyday.
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