One of the most important things we can do is to make falling in love with ourselves our number one priority. I’m sure you’ve heard it all before but self-love is the foundation to most of life’s wonders. Once you learn to fall in love with yourself, you’ll see improvements in your relationships, confidence, happiness, and life in general. But most importantly you deserve to be loved by yourself.
Learning to fall in love with yourself is a life-long process, but it is a journey that will fill your life with so much fulfilment and joy that it is more than worth it.
Imagine the feeling of loving yourself so unconditionally and fully that you know you’ve always got your back, you’ve always got someone to support and love you. Feels blissful right? Well, it is accessible to you. You just have to take the steps that are going to cultivate more self-love and you have to be willing to do the inner work.
I’m here to help you along on that processes and for some of you, maybe help you begin that processes. Here are 5 things you can start incorporating into your life that will help you fall in love with yourself.
1. Affirmations
I know I talk about affirmations all.of.the.time but that is because they’ve helped me transform my mindset so dramatically. They’re an exercise that can work for almost any type of mindset shift, but they’re particularly powerful when working on gaining more self-love.
The reason you feel the way you do about yourself is because you have repeatedly told yourself the same stories until they became true a.k.a you’ve used affirmations without knowing it. You’re now simply re-writing these affirmations to change your story to align with who you are right now.
The key to affirmations is making sure they resonate with you. It helps if you write them yourselves so they’re personal and tap into what it is you want to change. Secondly, use them regularly – every day if possible and it’s powerful to say them while looking at yourself in the mirror. Initially, they won’t feel true and it will seem like meaningless words but stick with it because eventually, you’ll start thinking hey actually this is true and BAM you self-view will change.
Here are some examples of affirmations to give you some inspiration:
- I am strong, powerful and capable of achieving anything
- I am beautiful
- I have so much to offer the world
- I am limitless
2. Fall in love with yourself & your strengths
Often times, we find it difficult to love ourselves because we don’t think there is anything worth loving. We struggle to see the strengths and gifts that we have because trust me, if you knew how amazing and gifted you were, it would be damn difficult for you not to love yourself.
I want to encourage you all to take this quick, easy, and free questionnaire to find out what your character strengths are (just click “take the free survey in the top right corner and select the appropriate questionnaire for your age). By completing this questionnaire you’ll get an insight into what your unique makeup of character strengths are. This can help you start seeing what amazing things you bring to the world.
Once you know what your signature strengths are, try out these two journaling exercises.
- Think about which people matter to you most in your life. Those who know you the best. Then think about what skills/strengths they would say you have. Do they think you’re kind, compassionate, funny, wise? This helps you see yourself from an outside perspective and allows you to see how much joy and value you bring to those around you.
- “You are irreplaceable and capable of making a contribution” think about this sentence and then write why it is true and how your strengths contribute to this. So if you got kindness as a character strength how does that contribute to you making the world a better place?
Trust me, you have so much value to bring to this world. There is only one you and therefore the world needs you.
3. Treat yourself like you are your own best friend
Take a second to think about how you treat yourself. The words you use to describe yourself and how you beat yourself up. Would you ever dream of saying this to your best friend? I’m guessing no. So why do you think it’s ok to do it to yourself? When negative self-thoughts or behaviours come up, take a breath and think, if it was my best friend telling me about this what would I say to them and how would I treat them? Then treat yourself in that same way. You deserve the love that you so willingly give out to others.
4. Be compassionate so you can fall in love with yourself unconditionally
Let’s face it, we are not perfect and we never will be. Some days we won’t feel like doing anything but sitting in bed, eating food, and watching Netflix. Some days, we’ll feel sad for no reason at all. It’s normal. You don’t have to feel amazing all of the time. In fact, being positive isn’t about never feeling bad it’s about accepting those emotions and feeling them while knowing that it will pass. So often we ‘love’ ourselves while we are feeling our best but when we have a bad day the negative self-talk and abuse comes back stronger than ever.
Again, imagine your friend said she wasn’t feeling great and didn’t feel motivated or happy. What advice would you give to her? Take your own advice. Be compassionate with yourself because you’re never going to be on top form all of the time. It’s important to love yourself through all phases of your life.
5. Write a list of your favourite things to do then take yourself on a date to do them
In today’s crazy-busy life, we are finding it increasingly more difficult to do the things that make us feel good. By neglecting the things we love doing, we are not filling up our own cups and we are not treating ourselves like we love ourselves.
Think of your favourite, life-giving activities, then schedule in time to do them. Treat it like you’re taking yourself on a date. No distractions, no compromises. Just something you love doing and the space and time to do it. You’ll be amazed how the feelings you have about yourself will change if you hang out with yourself, treat yourself well, and start doing things that make you feel alive.
I hope you’ll try out these exercises and incorporate the ones that feel right to you into your life. Remember falling in love with yourself is a process so learn to love the journey and everything will fall into place. You are worthy and deserving of your love – believe me.
x
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash ;Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash