Self-love is one of the most important aspects of living a healthy and fulfilled life. Learning how to love yourself isn’t easy, but with a small amount of daily work you can start taking steps toward loving yourself better and more deeply. Self-love means more self-worth, higher confidence, and a greater sense of well-being overall.
Self-love comes in many forms, but always comes from within ourselves and means that we don’t need material things or outside validation to feel happy about who we are. Discovering how to love yourself means discovering how to respect the way you feel about yourself and nurturing positive language and thoughts when directing them at yourself. Keep reading for a few helpful tools on how to love yourself and start feeling more confident in who you are!
Affirmations
One of the simplest ways to start practicing self-love is through using affirmations. Affirmations are essentially positive statements that you make towards yourself on a daily basis. Often, people will make a statement that is usually negative and try to spin it in a positive way.
For example, if you find yourself saying ‘I’m not doing enough’ try spinning that to say instead, ‘I may not have gotten everything done that I wanted, but I did accomplish these things.’ That way you are taking the focus off what you didn’t do and putting it on what you did do. This can feel a little cheesy to engage with at first, but after a little while, you’ll find yourself gravitating towards those positive statements more naturally.
Avoid Comparison
This is a big one, and a tricky one to get around. One of the things that stop people from truly loving themselves is by comparing themselves to other people. Oftentimes this is due to social media. Social media is a great way to communicate with friends, but it can also suck us into a spiral of self-doubt, feelings of missing out, and the perception that others are doing more fulfilling things with their lives than we are.
Remember that another person’s life might not work for you, and just because someone else is in a good place doesn’t dilute the things about ourselves that make our existence special. Limit social media usage and remember that you are good enough just the way you are.
Journaling
When we’re deep in the throes of self-doubt, it can be hard to remember what our accomplishments are. Journaling is a great way to make a list of your accomplishments and things that you’re proud of. Similar to affirmations, this can help change our perspective and put a positive spin on negative thoughts.
Instead of thinking about what you haven’t accomplished yet, make a list and see what you actually have accomplished. Start with a small amount of time, and then go back farther to see what you’re truly capable of. You’ll be surprised at how much you’ve learned and grown in your life.
Engage in Your Favorite Hobby
All of us have things we enjoy doing, but with busy schedules around work, family, and friend obligations it can be hard to feel like we have time to spend on them. The truth is, most of us just aren’t actually prioritizing our hobbies or think that anything we do outside of work is important.
Of course, this isn’t true, but it’s how many of us are conditioned to live our lives. To make time for your hobbies, start by setting aside a single hour in your week purely for yourself to do whatever it is you love. Whether it’s painting, playing music, making art, or going to an event, start by making a weekly ritual out of your activity.
This will begin to create a habit out of the pleasures in your life, and will give you something to look forward to each week! Having a hobby gives us a purpose outside of work, friends, and family and it’s an extremely important part of loving yourself to the fullest degree that you possibly can. So what are you waiting for? Start by carving out an hour in your week or weekend to start putting time aside for yourself!
Learning how to love yourself takes everyday work, and it’s not always as simple as it sounds, but all you need to do is start with small daily and weekly rituals to start prioritizing your own well-being. Affirmations are one of the best ways to combat negative thinking and spin it into a positive mindset about yourself.
Be careful not to compare yourself to others, and make sure you set time aside for your favorite activities. Self-love is about developing habits that prioritize your own joy and pleasure. It’s not only completely ok but something we all need to live rich and healthy lives.
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