The title of this post is a question everyone should answer. I know you so eagerly want to read this post but just before you go on, I want you to sit back, relax, take a deep breath and then ask yourself "DO I LOVE MYSELF"? What answer did you get? If you got a yes, how sure are you? Leave your comments in the comment section.
What is self love? Self love is the belief that you are a unique, amazing and valuable person. Self love is being confident in yourself and having a positive view of yourself. Loving yourself doesn't mean you are the smartest, most beautiful/handsome, or even the most talented or upright person in the world. It just means that you value yourself enough to accept yourself, your flaws and love yourself for who you are. Self love helps you make healthy and amazing choices in life. Self love is about getting in touch with yourself, your life, your well-being and your happiness. Yea... so many of us get carried away with loving our wives, husbands, girlfriends, kids, parents, siblings, friends, boyfriends and others that we end up forgetting how to love ourselves. This is it - Each individual is extremely special. You are very special and there is no other person like you in this world. Practicing and making self love a daily routine can prove to be extremely difficult and challenging especially in difficult times but self love is an extremely important aspect of living a happy life.
Self love is an act and it can simply be defined as the act of making a conscious effort to love and appreciate yourself for everything you are, everything you will be and everything you will become. It is the act of respecting and having an extremely high regard for your self, your opinions, well-being, happiness and all. Self love is the act of not settling for anything less than you deserve (When you love yourself, you will never settle for less). Self love is hell of a necessity in today's world. Everyone would totally agree that it is easier for us to love ourselves when everything is going fine, smoothly and extremely well but in times when things seem difficult, we tend to be so much harder on ourselves and forget to love ourselves. Most times all we are good at doing is judging ourselves, comparing ourselves to others, being extremely hard on ourselves, criticizing ourselves and all but we hardly ever praise ourselves, treat ourselves to one of our favorites and we don't even celebrate our success but we always make sure to criticize ourselves when we fail and that is completely wrong. Celebrating yourself is part of self love... If you reach a milestone in your life or do something really amazing and you can't give yourself accolades, praise and celebrate yourself but you praise others on having the slightest progress and all then you probably don't love yourself.. Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely no harm in giving others accolades but the thing is you shouldn't only celebrate or give others accolades you should also celebrate and give the most important person in your life (yourself) accolades too. Giving yourself the accolades, celebrating yourself on the smallest achievement and praising yourself are an extremely important aspect of self love.. Below are a few yet amazing ways I practice self love.
1) Eat good food, eat on time and eat healthy foods that can improve your emotional and mental health. Examples of foods that improve your emotional health: Vitamin B, Complex carbohydrates, Bananas, Omega 3, Oats, Berries, Dark chocolates, etc
2) Do things that make you happy
3) Start and end each day by telling yourself that you are the best and that you are unique and no one can ever be like you.
4) Speak more lovingly to yourself
5) Stop comparing yourself to others: Jeez you are so unique. You are one of a kind and comparing yourself to others would only make you feel worse. You see a part of people that they show you and allow you to see and no matter how well you know someone, you can never know how they see or perceive their lives. Comparing yourself to others kills self love. No one is perfect including those you compare yourself to so stop comparing yourself to people because you are amazing and just perfect in your own way...
6) Drink lots of water
7) Say no to negative thinking: Negative thoughts know how to find their way into our lives regardless of whether we want them or not. Negative thoughts can have a devastating impact on our well-being, happiness, relationships and our whole life that is one of the reasons why it is extremely important to challenge negative thinking.
8) Be nice to yourself
9) Celebrate your achievements, accomplishments, milestone and all regardless of how small they are
10) Stop seeking approval from others
11) Exercise
12) Prioritize yourself (Put yourself first ).
Practicing self love may not be easy but in the end it is all worth it so start learning to love yourself..The above mentioned are the ways I practice self love... I would like to know how you practice self love and which of these tips you find most rewarding so leave your comments in the comment section.You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens - Louise L. Hay