Learn to Love Yourself
Self-love is formally defined as a regard for one's own well-being and happiness (chiefly considered as a desirable rather than narcissistic characteristic). To me self-love is one of the most powerful skills you can develop. It is about accepting yourself fully - your beauty, your strength, your courage. Your flaws, your mistakes…your past. It is about treating yourself with kindness and respect.
There are some misconceptions about self love, the first being that it means you are self-indulgent. These are two very separate things. Self-indulgence is about being excessive or having unrestrained gratification of one’s own appetites, desires or whims. The difference in self-indulgent and self-love is the motivation behind it. Self-love’s motivations stem from having respect and care for yourself. The motivation behind self-indulgent is instant gratification or hedonism. To give an example of this: lets say you want to have a night off, take care of yourself and just not care about what’s going on in the world. So you decide to read a book. You get yourself all cozy and read and its a great time. Now this is self-care. You’re putting your needs ahead of others and deciding you need some down time and me time. Where does it cross into the line of self-indulgent? Well let’s say you decide to stay up till 3 in the morning reading that book. You’re happy, you don’t care that your alarm is going to go off in three hours, you don’t care about the consequences. THAT - that is self-indulgent. It has now gone from an act of self-care to an act of self-indulgence. Now I use this example because its relatively harmless but replace reading a good book with having a bottle of wine each night. Replace a good book with eating out every single night. What are the consequences of those actions? Sure either of them felt good at the time but its the consequences that you have to think about.
Practicing self-care is about doing acts that are a positive benefit to you all around. The consequences are positive - not negative. So how do you balance it? You practice and you be gentle on yourself. There is nothing wrong with indulging every now and then. I talked about spoiling yourself a few weeks ago and that is about indulging in things that do in fact make you feel good. Even if its just for a short minute - that’s okay. Sometimes if getting a little treat is going to get you through the fucking day - that’s okay. If you need a coffee from your favorite coffee shop do it. Trust me that $7 coffee is not going to make the difference on whether or not you can afford to buy a house, no matter what the finance Chads and Brads are saying. The lines in life are blurry, so that means taking care of yourself is blurry because its about what YOU want. Knowing what you want - that is an act of self-love.
So let’s redefine what self-love is so we can come back around to our main topic which is that self-love is having a regard for your own self’s happiness and well-being. It is so important to have self-love because it protects you, it heals you and allows you to keep fighting after your goals and dreams. Self-love is about treating yourself with kindness. It is NOT about being self-indulgent and it is NOT about being 100% positive with yourself all the time. It is about having a healthy balance of knowing yourself - loving yourself and knowing that you are flawed, but you still care about yourself and even when you make mistakes you know its okay. Because you still love yourself. How many times has it happened in your life where you said “they aren’t perfect but I love them?” Have you ever said it about yourself? I didn’t, not for a really long time. I grew up with this idea for a long time that if I didn’t have adorning friends and family that it meant that I couldn’t love myself. That if others didn’t love me then that somehow limited my own self love for myself. I learned through navigating through my limiting beliefs and walking through my chilhood trauma that I had a lot of wiring that had been programmed into me that was not my own. We come into this world as blank canvases - there is of course the argument of nature vs nurture but that’s not for today’s discussion. Anyways - we come into this world as blank canvases and then people along their way start painting on us, drawing on us, molding us to be who they expect us to be. Some of those things are good. Being taught to tie your shoes - that’s good. Being taught how to read, okay yea that’s good to. Who taught you those limiting beliefs that are echoing through your mind right now though? At some point, someone maybe they did it explicitly or implicitly, but at some point someone walked up to your canvas and wrote out that limiting belief. For me for most of my life it was that: I was second choice and I would always be. I didn’t come up with that. I had to learn that. So now as an independent adult who has created a life for myself that I love - I have had to undo that learning. I have had to care for myself. To learn to love myself.
As adults we are responsible for all of the things in our lives. I still remember my mom saying “oh when you’re an adult you can do what you want, but for now its going to be my way.” And she was usually saying something like that when I was being a pain in the ass about not getting my way, but as an adult I have had to do a lot of healing for my inner child and my younger self. Because as I went through therapy and went through this journey of learning to love myself I found that I needed to also give my younger self some love too. I share my journey so not that you feel pity or feel like you need to compare your story to my own, but to help you understand that self-love looks different for everyone and its NEVER too late to start your own journey and on your own path to discovering what that looks like and sounds like for yourself. For myself, I did a lot of work around giving my younger self the apartment and home that she always wanted. I have pink and glitter and sparkles everywhere. I decorate my home that makes my adult self and my younger self happy. I do things that make me happy, regardless of judgment from others. I also learned to forgive myself for my past mistakes, I stopped allowing other people to take advantage of me. I make healthy choices for myself most of the time and I challenge myself every day to get closer to the future version of myself that I want to be. These are just some ways to practice self-love. Other ways can be: practicing affirmations, being positive with yourself (even when you fail), valuing your feelings and emotions - regardless if someone says you are being too sensitive. Also side bar, if someone says you are too sensitive about something they just don’t have the capabilities or skills to understand your depth and range of emotion. Don’t let someone diminish your feelings because they are incapable of understanding yours. Being sensitive is a superpower - not a weakness. This is also something that I have had to unlearn as I’ve begun to love myself: which is tuning into my own emotions and understanding the place they are coming from. Another way you can practice self love is by setting realistic expectations for yourself. By setting realistic expectations you are not setting the bar too low for yourself, no. What you are doing is understanding your capabilities and what you can do and aiming for that rather than setting the bar so high that you are setting yourself up for failure. For example I set a goal recently of being able to do ONE pull-up by the end of the calendar year. I try once a week when I’m at the gym to do one pull-up and the other day I was actually able to pull myself up almost a whole two inches. Now that might not sound like improvement to some of you, but this time last year that wasn’t even a goal that I could have set for myself. Knowing what I am capable of, knowing that I have the power and the time and skillset to be able to accomplish something inspires me to keep trying. To challenge myself to meet that goal without the fear of failure.
Because when you set unrealistic expectations you fail. This is also an example of setting yourself up for failure. If I were to say at the beginning of the year I would like to have the goal of doing 10 pull-ups in a row - I’m gonna fail that so hard and I’m going to feel like “wow I can’t even do one yet and its already month two of the new year. I’m never going to get to 10.” That sounds so depressing. That sounds so incapable. I have no faith in that person. I don’t want to be that person. I want to be the person that understands what I’m capable of, and I think everyone else is capable of practicing the same self-love - their way. I want to go back to that example though. Did you notice that when I said “I’m never going to get to 10?” I want to point out there that is a limiting belief. I am LIMITING what I could be capable of by already setting the bar for myself. And here’s the thing - I might not ever get to 10 but wouldn’t be pretty damn impressive if I could get to 5? What if I did get past 10? Having self-love and practicing it on a regular basis protects you from these limiting beliefs. And hey, I get it. Those limiting beliefs can be a bitch. This past week I was really struggling to make some decisions when it came to my business and I realized that even with all the mental health work and therapy I was still having limiting beliefs, they are just in a different form now. But what I did, was I said them out loud to myself. I stood in the mirror and said them to myself. And you know what I realized - that I still had a lot of self doubt around my abilities and that I needed to remind myself that I am staring a new business, starting a new life and its okay that I have to pivot or take a step sideways so that I can be open to the universe for other opportunities. I was so focused on the black and white of my decision making that I didn’t realize that I was limiting myself and holding myself back. I realized in that moment that I needed to take a day, take a day and give into some me time. Nurture and soothe my nervous system so that I could come back the next day and kick some ass.
That is self-care. Self-care is healing and nourishing your body, mind and soul. I like to practice three acts of self-care a day, and mind you these aren’t big things. I’m not turning my bathroom into a spa every damn day - although I wish I could. No when it comes to healing and nourishing your body sometimes the simplest of routines is the best way to show yourself that you care and love yourself. Feel free to write some of these down as I go through each point of the body, mind and soul.
Caring for my body:
skincare in the AM and PM
getting physical movement, whether that is going to the gym, going on a walk with my dogs or just doing some small movements around my apartment. Getting up and moving is the best way to give yourself a second to reconnect.
Nourishing my body - sometimes ya just need a little orange or slice of cheese to make you feel a little better.
Lastly is getting a restful night’s sleep.
Creating routines around healing and nouishing your body is one form of self-care. Movement and nourishment power your body, while skincare routines can leave you glowing after a good night’s sleep.
Caring for your mind: I do want to say that this is the same as caring for your mental health.
Affirmations - giving yourself daily reminders that you are accepting yourself fully.
Journaling - a simple act, that can sometimes be difficult to find the time of the day to do, but when done it can be used to get your limiting beliefs out on paper and out of your mind.
Mindset shifts - rethink each of those limiting beliefs coming from a growth mindset and the power those little thoughts have over you begins to dissipate with time.
Saying “no”- you can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no. Protect your energy, space and mind.
Treating yourself to daily affirmations serves as a daily reminder that you accept yourself fully. That you desire to have a growth mindset by practicing small mindset shifts and learning to say no helps protect your energy and mind.
Last, but certainly not least - caring for your soul. Caring for your soul is about small little moments that help nourish you but not in the physical sense of the word. They fuel you so that when you are feeling low or insecure you can rely on these moment to remind you that it is okay to have setbacks and you are learning to be gentle and patient with yourself.
some ways that I practice caring for my soul are:
bubble baths, it helps to relax my mind and cleanse my body.
consuming good media, intentionally consuming media that relaxes me and inspires me.
having relaxing scents in my home
soothing teas
Adding even just one of these things a day to your life can lead you down the path of beginning to love yourself. Because when you love yourself you are more likely to make better choices for yourself. You are less self-critical. You have people in your life that care about you for you rather than what you can do for them, because you practice self-love and self-care. It is as I said earlier, about creating a healthy balance of knowing yourself and loving yourself and accepting every single fucking part of yourself. Remember you are the artist now for your own canvas. You have the paintbrush and you can turn yourself into the image that YOU want - not your mom, not your friends, not your lovers - but you. So I’m asking each one of you to do this - add ONE loving thought and ONE loving action to your daily life for the next seven days. Just one. I promise you, those self-defeating thoughts and limiting beliefs will begin to be a lot more quiet.
