Do you sometimes feel like you don’t deserve love? To help you break down the barriers you have to love yourself right now, here are some tips to get you started.
In a world where our lifestyles are incredibly focused on achievements, comparing ourselves to others and a desire to constantly do more we can easily become our own worst critics.
Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have and it needs just as much nurturing as any other relationship. So give yourself time to build authentic self-love with these tips.
Honor your needs
Sometimes you get so caught up in the daily grind – fulfilling your purpose and chasing your goals – you forget about your constant companion. You!
When you neglect yourself, you neglect your needs like your well-being, sleep, nutrition, and self-care you’ll quickly burn out.
Honouring your needs is respecting your mind and your body. You prioritize your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being by understanding and respecting your limits, by creating healthy boundaries to protect your time and energy, by grounding yourself in your values and priorities, by learning how to manage your time, so you create enough space for your self.
When you honour your needs you know what matters most to you in life and boldly live from that knowledge every day. Instead of waiting for others to meet your needs, fulfil them yourself. Before fulfilling your needs, you need to identify what they are, ask yourself: “what do I need right now?”
Practice more positive self-talk
Self-talk is your internal dialogue. It’s influenced by your subconscious mind, and it reveals your thoughts, beliefs, questions, and ideas.
The way you talk to yourself can really impact your confidence. The effect can be good or bad depending on whether your self-talk is positive or negative. Negative self-talk makes you feel pretty bad about yourself and the things that you are going through, it’s kind of like having a “Debbie downer” sitting on your shoulder dragging everything down.
Positive self-talk makes you feel good about yourself and the things that are going on in your life. It’s like having an optimistic voice in your head, an inner cheerleader, that always sees the bright side.
The more you work on improving your self-talk, the easier you’ll find it. It’s just like learning how to play an instrument, it’s really hard at first and you might play the wrong notes a lot of the time but you will get better with time.
By working on replacing negative self-talk with more positive self-talk, you’re more likely to feel in control of things that are going on in your life and to achieve your goals.
Realize that you are enough
In a world where people’s value is constantly being judged on how they look, how much they earn, or what they’ve achieved in life, it can often feel difficult to accept that simply being you is what gives you value.
You are enough as you are. You don’t have to earn the right to be deemed good enough. You don’t have to work for it and you don’t have to prove it to anyone.
You are – just as you are right now – ENOUGH! Give yourself permission to be you! Accept, believe in, and love yourself knowing you are already enough and you don’t need anyone else to tell you that!
Appreciate your unique qualities
Most of us have spent our entire life trying to fit in. We have been conditioned to look at what is “different” about us and count it as a flaw that needs to be hidden or that our edges need to be blunt in order to fit the shoe.
Each and every one of us has been blessed with a unique set of talents, strengths, passions, and service aptitudes. And those things all come together and culminate in a beautiful way for each of us – and we express them in a way no one else can. Make a list of 10 things that make you special. They can be big, meaningful things or smaller things. They can even be things that you don’t necessarily love, but they still make you unique.
End toxic relationships
Sometimes we find ourselves in relationships that make us miserable more often than they make us happy, relationships that we know in our hearts are not good for us, but still, we have a hard time leaving.
Whether it’s with a partner, a family member, or a friend, ending relationships is never easy. But, when it comes to toxic relationships, ending them could be one of the best things you can do for yourself. You are worthy of love and if you aren’t getting that from your partner, or the people in your life, you really should consider if moving on
Anyone who always makes you doubt yourself, feel emotionally drained, or unworthy is a constant threat to your mental health. Make a plan to set healthy boundaries or to remove that person from your life in 2022.
Celebrate your achievements
Take some time to reflect on the major triumphs you’ve had in life so far. You are allowed to have a brag sheet.
Celebrating maintains us in a state of gratitude. It is gratitude that will attract more things to be grateful for. When you celebrate your wins you are also reinforcing good habits that lead to success.
Make a list of the most difficult struggles you have faced and overcome. How did those events change and form you into the person you are now. What did you learn from the experience?
When we look at these events in the rearview mirror we can see that they played a big part in forming us into more compassionate loving persons, we can see how these events have made us stronger and more resilient. Take a few minutes to look over what you wrote down. Aren’t you amazed at what you’ve made it through?
Be grateful
Living your life with gratitude means choosing to focus your time and attention on what you appreciate. The goal is not to block out difficulties, but to approach those difficulties from a different perspective.
Gratitude helps you see that not everything is terrible, at least not all the time. When you practice gratitude you cultivate a greater appreciation for your own unique qualities and strengths as well as other people’s talents. You start to see other sides of people you maybe didn’t pay attention to before you started to actively look out for them.
When you are in a state of gratitude and feeling blessed you become more resourceful than you can imagine. Use a journal or just use notes on your phone to write down 5-10 things you are grateful for. Being in a state of gratitude restores and resets you and it helps you show love to yourself and others.
Learn to say no
Sometimes we do too much for other people, we like to please other people, so we tend to stretch ourselves too thin and commit to everything we can. This can lead to us forgetting to look after ourselves sometimes, so that’s why it is good to say no. Focus on yourself when you can, or if you are overwhelmed.
We all tend to stretch ourselves too thin sometimes and sadly this can have an impact on your productivity. You won’t get as much done, at least not well or on time. To stay productive, minimize stress, and avoid wasting your time, you have to learn the art of saying no.
One thing that’s good to keep in mind when practising saying no is that you are not responsible for other people. It’s not up to you to ensure someone is happy, feeling good, or even how they feel about you.
Saying no is not about being mean. It’s about respecting yourself, your time, energy, and sanity. Once you learn how to say no in a good way, people will respect your willingness to practice self-care and responsibility.
Practice forgiveness
Whether it’s towards yourself or others, holding a grudge or carrying resentment only burdens you. Look at it like carrying around a backpack all day. Your first act in the morning would be to pick up that heavy backpack and put it on your back and then carry it around everywhere you go.
Instead of picking up the backpack of anger, grudge or resentment every morning, pick up a cup of forgiveness and drink it. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Whatever was done to you, decide you learned a valuable lesson, and move forward.
Forgiveness frees you. It allows you to take your power back. The energy you have invested will be free for other things like healing, personal growth, and more positive experiences.
Reflecting on your mistakes can help you forgive and forget. If you can look back on some poor choices you may have made, and forgive yourself, you can start to move on and forget about the past. You are not your past and not your mistakes.
Forgiveness can lead to feelings of understanding, empathy, and compassion for you and the one who hurt you. It doesn’t mean forgetting or excusing the harm done but when you are no longer a victim of resentment you are no longer controlled by negative energy.
By practising forgiveness you allow yourself to live in the present and to see the good again.
Take care of yourself
Self-care is important because it encourages you to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself, it will help you balance your wellness and improve your overall health.
When you take time to take care of yourself you learn a lot about yourself and it can provide you with insight into what you need to be the best version of yourself. It can help you cope with stress and to prioritize what’s important to you. Also, self-care is about filling your own cup, because you cannot give to others what you don’t have yourself.
It’s important to remember that self-care is not a selfish act. It’s also not something we force ourselves to do or something we don’t enjoy doing. It’s about considering our needs, knowing what we need in order to take care of ourselves, and giving ourselves the time and place to do so.
Wrapping up
Starting to love yourself more is always about the journey, not the destination. There are no rules on how you do it or how long it can take to learn how to love yourself. The only thing that counts is that you gradually increase the love you have towards yourself.
Learning to love yourself can be pretty hard and you are probably going to have some days where you feel like you haven’t made any progress. Just remember that those are exactly the days when you need to love yourself the most.
This article was originally posted by Stina on www.thekindlifeclub.com
