Daily Dose of Self-love
Life moves so fast. It’s easy to put ourselves on a back burner in favour of the to-do list, but it catches up with us. We may not feel good, are irritable and frustrated all the time. We may even feel like our life has little meaning or purpose. So how do we make ourselves a priority with all life’s obligations and distractions? Loving yourself more through intentional acts can enhance the quality of life.
While it’s easy to treat yourself to a spa day or binge on your favourite dessert, self-love requires time and effort. This includes reflecting on both the negative and positive in your life. You have to be open to looking at yourself with an honest and kind eye. By proactively engaging in self-love, you are building yourself up for happiness and a future that you deserve.
Use these four steps below to aid you along your self-love journey;
Stage 1: Define Your Struggles & Let Yourself Heal
Before starting this step, you must allow yourself to feel vulnerable. Now identify the areas that you sometimes struggle with in life. Stay true and transparent with yourself to find out where your wounds are. Only then, will you be able to start to heal. Forgive yourself for any shortcomings and make actionable goals to improve your life. Part of doing this involves recognizing how you sabotage yourself.
Think about the last time you hurt yourself with your own self-critical words. Write down everything that happened. This technique is called mind mapping and it will help you see where your negative thoughts are coming from.
Stage 2: Stand Up to Your Negative Inner Voice
Practice mindfulness when negativity arises. When you challenge your negative inner voice, you look for the root of hurtful thoughts. Find out what you need when these scenarios arise. Is the negativity a cover for something that you want in your life? Let go of the thoughts that hinder your self-love.
Stage 3: Make Your Self-Love Routine
Uncover positive ways to motivate yourself for your own improvement. Learn how to shift your mindset to focus on things you love and put yourself first. Keep track of your progress by journaling so that you can learn how to maintain or even accelerate your growth.
Stage 4: Lean on Loved Ones
While you keep track of your self-improvement progress, strengthen relationships with your loved ones who support you. Let people in on the goals you are trying to achieve. Not only will you build a support system but you may inspire others to embark on a self-love journey. Encouragement goes a long way and it goes both ways. Self-love is a journey, not a destination!
Here are 3 ways to help you practice self-love:
1. Notice the negative self-talk
Self-deflating and anxious thoughts about the future or regrets and guilt about the past can rule our minds. To lessen these often-incessant thoughts take notice of them. Set aside some time each day where you become an outsider of your own thoughts. When you have a negative thought, notice it, and turn it around into a positive one.
To help think more empowering thoughts, you can use affirmations. Here is a quick practice: Make two columns on a sheet of paper. Title the first column, “Negative Thoughts” and the second column, “Positive Affirmations”. Now think of three to five negative thoughts that you have about yourself. For example, one maybe, “I’m never good enough”. You can counteract that thought with a positive affirmation like, “I accept and love myself for who I am.” Keep this sheet handy, saying the positive affirmations to yourself often.
2. Believe in yourself
Past failure, disappointments and self-doubt can prevent us from pursuing what we want in life. We can easily lose faith in ourselves when we experience setbacks. Nevertheless, if we press on, believing that we can learn from our experiences to achieve our goals then we’ve raised the bar in life. It’s never easy to keep sticking our necks out, for love, for a new or better job, for growth, but when we do we’ve increased our self-worth and motivation. Believe in yourself, your skills, talents and values, in spite of discouragement and criticism from others. Look to the future and don’t look back. Above all, be kind to yourself when things don’t go as planned.
3. Practice self-care
Taking care of our body, mind and soul is essential to loving ourselves. Dedicating some time for daily self-care can be life-changing. Try this: write on a sheet of paper this question: “If I loved myself more, I would_________________. Here are some suggestions:
Exercise 20 minutes a day
Meditate or practise gratitude
Learn something new
Spend more time with friends
Get regular massages
Volunteer for a good cause
Go on a vacation, even for a couple of days
Start a business
Eat better and take vitamins
Improve a living space
Quit a bad habit
Once you make your list of answers, you can choose to focus on one, two or as many as you can, and see how your happiness increases.
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” ~Lucille Ball
Life works better when our self-esteem is high from loving ourselves. Could you love yourself more? To fully love and accept ourselves, for most people, is a life-long journey. We see this in the choices we make.
HOW INBLOOM HELPS LEADERS LEAD WITH WELLBEING FIRST
In order to navigate your working life’s ups and downs, leaders must first focus on their own personal and professional wellbeing. At In Bloom, we are helping leaders have a better understanding as to what their wellbeing looks like, holistically. We do this with in partnership with the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey. This is the first step of our Leadership Wellbeing Coaching journey.
Reference:
https://www.virtuesforlife.com/love-yourself-first-5-ways-to-practice-self-love/ (https://www.virtuesforlife.com/4-stages-of-self-love/)