If you asked 100 women if they love themselves, about 50% would shrug, 25% might give a tentative yes and the other 25% would probably say no or they don’t know how. The practice of self-love is very closely tied to one’s self-esteem. And while you may not know it, the level of your self-esteem will have an impact on every single decision you make during your lifetime.
Before we dig into why the practice of self-love is so important, let’s first make sure we understand what we are talking about because before you can practice it, you must first understand what it means.
Self-love means being able to appreciate yourself and nurture yourself in meaningful ways. This fosters and supports our psychological, spiritual and physical growth. When you love yourself, you view yourself both internally and externally with a high regard. When you practice self love, you take care of your own needs: physical, psychological and spiritual needs in ways that contribute to your overall well being. You do not settle for less than that to which you are entitled and deserving.
Self-love can mean something different for each person because we all have many ways to take care of ourselves
. Figuring out what self-love looks like for you as an individual is an important part of your mental health.
What does self-love mean to you?
For starters, it can mean:
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Talking to and about yourself with love
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Prioritizing yourself
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Giving yourself a break from self-judgment
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Trusting yourself
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Being true to yourself
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Being nice to yourself
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Setting healthy boundaries
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Forgiving yourself when you aren’t being true or nice to yourself
For many people, self-love is another way to say self-care. To practice self-care, we often need to go back to the basics because in our busy world with our hectic lives, many of us push our self-care to the bottom o our to-do list.
How can you begin to practice self-care:
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Listen to our bodies
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Take breaks from work and move/stretch.
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Spend an afternoon at the spa if you can afford it, if not, spend an afternoon at a park reading your favourite book
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Put the phone down and connect to yourself or others, or do something creative.
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Eating healthily, but sometimes letting yourself indulge in your favorite foods.
Self-love means accepting yourself as you are in this very moment for everything that you are. It means accepting your emotions for what they are and putting your physical, emotional and mental well-being first. In other words, my favourite: #chooseyourself
How and Why to Practice Self Love
So now we know that self-love motivates you to make healthy choices in life. When you hold yourself in high esteem, you’re more likely to choose things that nurture your well-being and serve you well. These things may be in the form of changing your diet to incorporate more healthy choices, setting aside time in your calendar for some exercise every day, even if it is just a simple walk, working on developing healthy relationships that nurture your soul and help you feel alive and good about yourself and your life.
Ways to practice self-love include:
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Becoming mindful. People who have more self-love tend to know what they think, feel, and want.
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Taking actions based on need rather than want. By staying focused on what you need, you turn away from automatic behavior patterns that get you into trouble, keep you stuck in the past, and lessen self-love.
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Practicing good self-care. You will love yourself more when you take better care of your basic needs. People high in self-love nourish themselves daily through healthy activities, like sound nutrition, exercise, proper sleep, intimacy and healthy social interactions.
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Making room for healthy habits. Start truly caring for yourself by mirroring that in what you eat, how you exercise, and what you spend time doing. Do stuff, not to “get it done” or because you “have to,” but because you care about you.
Finally, to practice self-love, start by being kind, patient, gentle and compassionate to yourself, the way you are with those people whom you care about.
How will these improvements manifest in your life?
You will slowly begin to see that when you #choose yourself you are reaping the benefits of what it means to finally put yourself first. Doing this, practicing self-love in the form of self-care is not selfish though many women see it that way. Think of it this way: when you are on an airline flight, the flight attendant always makes a speech about what to do if the oxygen masks drop down. If you are traveling with a child, put YOUR oxygen mask on first before your assist your child. Why? Because if you lost consciousness from lack of oxygen, you will be unable to assist your child. If you are a mother, this is an extremely important lesson to learn. If you love your children, take care of their mother first and foremost. Experts will tell you that it is extremely important to #choose yourself and that doing so is not only NOT selfish, it is a necessity. This ability to love oneself is extremely important for women who are people pleasers. Those who don’t learn how to do it, risk burning out, becoming depressed and sometimes even ending their marriage because of the stress.
Like any other skill or “exercise regimen” learning how to love oneself can be very hard. For the person who is just beginning, it can feel like running a marathon, very intense, hard work. Work on not becoming disillusioned or overwhelmed by the journey because the payoffs you will derive are huge. I promise you won’t regret it.
When I first began my journey toward self-love, it felt like I was trying to move a mountain and, in many ways, I was. Because of my history and my lack of self-esteem, I didn’t think there was anything to love about myself or that I even deserved to love myself. Truthfully, I didn’t know how. I thought that loving myself meant that I would grow a huge ego and become an insufferable boor but it couldn’t have been farther from the truth. When you engage in self-love, it’s actually a gentle process, it’s the simple act of affirming yourself and your right to live as a free, happy person. Not practicing self-love is a torturous exercise in despair and invalidation of yourself, it is the practice of disavowing your right to exist and be content with your place in the world. It took me many years to truly learn how to practice self-love; there were many stops and starts, many wrong turns and in many ways it was trial by fire and I often struggled with why it really even mattered. As I began to love myself more and more, it became obvious to me why it mattered: because I was not the hopeless wretch I had always thought I was, because I deserved to be loved by someone and loving myself was the most important thing I could ever give myself.
Self care and self love take many forms
Practicing self-care is the flip side of self-love and once you learn how to practice self-love, adding self-care to your daily life will become as natural to you as waking up in the morning.
A self-care practice can be as simple as spending an hour at the spa having a pedicure and manicure. It can be taking an half hour to laze away in the hammock. On Sunday afternoons, I used to go into my bedroom and have a nap saying to my children, “Don’t wake me up unless the house is on fire!” My children knew that when the bedroom door was closed, they were to knock and wait for my response before they could enter freely. That was my way of carving out an oasis for myself from a busy hectic weekday cycle.
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