It’s Valentine’s Day, do you know what that means? This is the day for you to truly start loving yourself. In our crazy busy lives filled with endless commitments and responsibilities, we get lost in this idea that our love for ourselves is formed by being loved by another; based on our success, the material items we possess, or even our appearance. The truth is that none of this truly matters. It feels good to matter though – to be important in someone’s world and in turn you learn to love yourself. Although unconditional love is something all human beings crave, you are in control of the happiness within yourself and your soul.
Here are some ideas created for you to follow that will hopefully guide you to truly loving yourself for who you are and how important you are. Self-love is a great practice that doesn’t need to take extra time or money. These steps only require you to replace negative thoughts in your day-to-day life.
Become mindful of your thoughts and actions
Mindfulness is about focusing on your awareness of the present moment. In this fast past life style there our times you are caught up on what your future holds for you that you almost forget where your body and minds are at the moment. Mindfulness is living intentionally, not haphazardly, and being content with where you are while pursuing where you want to go.
Meditation is a therapeutic breathing exercise to help you put your worries aside and put your mind at ease. Practicing meditation for even a few minutes a day is the first new step in your daily routine of practicing self-love.
One of the best ways to start practicing is by downloading an app called headspace or or an app called calm, both work great to train your body and mind to stress less. Another way is to just look up a YouTube video on how to meditate and have a guide speak to you through the steps.
An example of being mindful in your thoughts about yourself, is if you are struggling with doubts about yourself, replace those thoughts with a mindful mantra instead. . Instead of saying “I will never say a negative thing about myself again,” say “I want to say one positive thing about myself each day.”
Act on what you need rather than what you want.
Self-love combines both feelings and actions. There may be days where you feel selfish and self-serving, and other times you have days of relentless giving. Living life with design and purpose means that you are fulfilling your destiny. If you wake up in the morning with a positive attitude, and speak kind words to yourself then you are ready to face the day enthusiastically. This is when you truly know that you love yourself.
You may want a date on Valentine’s day, but you don’t need a date to know that you are loved. You don’t need the love of others to be happy with yourself. The same thing goes for success and material wants, these are not the wants that will fulfill your soul in the end.
Good self-care.
What does good self-care mean? When thinking of self-care the first idea that comes to mind is having a healthy lifestyle. This means eating healthy, exercising regularly, practicing mediation, and spending time alone to enjoy yourself. Good self-care is giving yourself time to rest, time to be alone and reflect on your gratitudes. Another good self-care tip is to understand what you have done wrong and how to learn from the mistakes you have made in the past, and how to improve your life so that the mistakes are not repeated.
Hobbies are also another good form of self-care, doing what makes you happy will bring you joy to each day. If your hobby is something as significant as journaling or going for a run, make sure you include that into your daily schedule, do not let that happy time be taken from you because you are “too busy.”
Setting boundaries.
Know what you are comfortable with. It’s easy to become careless with what we reveal about ourselves and others, and what we allow others to reveal to us. One thing that humans struggle with is standing by the boundaries that we say we have set. It’s easy to say what our boundaries are, but putting them into action is much more difficult.
A huge part of self-love is being able to stand up for yourself when you are feeling taken advantage of. In order to live an authentic life, be empowered, and have healthy relationships — you need to have boundaries. And boundaries involve knowing your limitations, and saying and implementing ‘no’ as needed. Do not overwork yourself, but most importantly do not try to always be pleasing others.
Protect yourself.
Self-love is creating a supportive and loving environment for you to thrive. It is learning to say no to things or people that do not make you feel good or happy.
Loving yourself is expressing gratitude daily for the body and mind that you have. It is accepting that you are not perfect, and loving yourself nevertheless.It may even mean getting rid of material items that do not bring pleasure, beauty or purpose into your life. You can reduce stress and feelings of being overwhelmed by reducing clutter.
Learning to forgive yourself.
Forgiveness is tough.
Whether our forgiveness is for ourselves or for others, it will always be tough to recognize that we have had a mess up or failed to do the correct thing. But you have to realize that you will make mistakes and you will have a few bumps in the road but these mistakes create who you are and the only way to continue to grow is to forgive those mistakes you have made and the mistakes you will make.
Love pushes out the sadness in our hearts, so by recognizing that you love yourself and practicing self-love each and everyday, you allow others to express their unconditional love towards you. By letting love in, you not only get to feel the satisfaction of being loved by another, you also get to release some old pain you may be holding on to.
Live intentionally.
Did anyone ever tell you that rule of “if you have nothing nice to say, do not say it at all?” Well this is a rule that you must live by in order to live intentionally. You must be intentional by noticing your thought process and seeing how you can be improved. Once you have noticed what your thoughts are you must make an effort to change the negatives into positives. This gives you all of the power over your thoughts! When you wake up in the morning, be aware of the thoughts you’re thinking. If they make you feel strong and capable, keep thinking about them. If they don’t, try thinking about something else. Being intentional costs nothing, and it helps you find healthy ways of thinking.
One tip for being intentional is to think of your thoughts as experiments. By thinking of your thoughts as experiments, it takes the pressure off of yourself to stick to one way of doing things. If one way of thinking fails, that’s okay. You tried it, learned from it, and now you can move on to something better that actually works for you.
Positivity is having the understanding that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, if you just keep going and trying your best. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and annoyed. The problem is when you let those emotions stop you from progressing and limit what you can achieve.
I find it absolutely exhausting to be someone I’m not. One way to practice self-love is to recognize that you are YOU for a reason. Your unique talents and abilities are yours to develop and cultivate. Do not waste your precious time trying to change things that don’t need to be changed. Instead, focus on enhancing those abilities and attributes that make you unique.
