Self-Love: Practices

Part 2 of “Learning to Love Yourself”

This post is about the specific self-love practices you can implement in your life as you continue on your journey of learning to love yourself.

I am assuming you have come to this post after reading part one of “Learning to Love Yourself”, but I If you haven’t read part one yet and you would like to, I will Link it for you down below.

Learning to Love Yourself Part 1

If you have read part one or just want to skip to the part that you can apply to your life, then keep on reading.

Key points

• Self-Love Practices
• Self-Love is  a mindset
• Don’t Just Say it, Do it

Self-Love Practices

1. Get to know yourself

Often people can feel disconnected from themselves, because they don’t truly know who they are. Maybe they have been putting on this persona to fit in, avoid conflict, or just do what they are told. Knowing your deepest interests, hobbies, passions, values, and the essence of your being can truly be a foreign concept to many people, but like anything else in this world, its not too late to learn. Lets begin with some…

Questions to reflect on(mentally or write down your answers)

• What activities help me relax?
• What am I currently doing regularly that I don’t actually enjoy?
• What is something I get excited to do every time?
• What’s something I have always wanted to do?
• What is a new skill I’d like to learn?

Potential Answers:

• Reading
• Going on a walk
• Journaling
• Painting
• Watching tv
• Playing an instrument
• Sports
• Etc.

• 

Part of this process of uncovering who you are is trial and error as well as reflection. Put yourself out there and try different things. As you are doing the activity or afterwards, spend some time reflecting on how you truly felt during that activity? Did you feel rejuvenated or drained, relaxed or stressed, content or frustrated? You can reflect in your mind, talk to someone about it, or my personal favorite, you can journal. Read more details on journaling in my “Free Therapy” post.

Also pay attention to the setting and company you had during that activity. The people around you as well as the environment can influence your experience in both positive and negative ways. For example if you choose to go hiking with people do don’t completely connect with and there is a cold and windy rain the entire time, you may develop a negative association with hiking. I recommend not completely ruling out hiking as something you may enjoy because of one bad experience.

2. Be your own best friend

How?

Be happy being alone. 

Much easier said than done right? Let me explain with a…

Story

When I was in college, I spent a lot of time with my friend group at the time, who I would consider my closest inner circle of people. After about a year of spending every evening and a weekend hanging out with them I realized how much of myself was hidden from them. I realized that I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my true self to those people. I noticed that while hanging out with them, I was either staying quiet and trying to go unnoticed, or I was changing myself to be noticed or liked by those people. 

I want to mention that I am not trying trash talk them or blame them in anyway, I simply think that our interests, personality types, and values didn’t align. Something that I didn’t really know on a conscious level, because at the time I wanted to be like them so I was willing to try on a new persona. 

Back to the point, once I realized that those are not the people I want to spend the bulk of my time with, I knew I needed to distance myself from them in order to get closer to my authentic self. I moved houses(because I was living with one of the friends), and started to learn that I was finally okay being alone.

I want to highlight this point, because it is so common to feel FOMO(fear of missing out), lonely/isolated, unwanted or unloved, when you’re by yourself. The important thing to remember, practice, and learn is that being alone doesn’t have to equate to being or feeling lonely. 

I no longer had 5-6 people I could text to go surfing or hiking with. In the beginning I would try reaching out to people for a last minute surf sesh and wouldn’t get any takers. This was pretty discouraging and felt quite lonely. Eventually I embraced the idea of going out on my own to do these activities and put it to action. Suddenly I felt so independent and empowered. I no longer had to plan around other people schedules or preferences. I was suddenly able to just ask myself what I wanted and had the freedom to just go do it. 

This led to a lot of self discovery and more adventures in the future(a story for another day). Essentially I got to know myself and spend time doing things that I loved to do. If you have the time and a judgement free space to try new things and explore, you begin to be more and more aligned with yourself.  

If you are a super extraverted person, don’t worry, you won’t be without close friends forever. Eventually I created a network of people with similar values, who were like minded, and I genuinely felt like myself around. This way I wasn’t always going on solo adventures. We may not have been each other’s top priorities or spent 100% of our time together, but it didn’t matter because I was my own best friend. 

Self-love is a mindset

As a quick preface, a sure way to get no where on this journey of learning to love yourself is by thinking “I will love my self when…”

“When I am thinner” “When I am not depressed” “When I have more friends” “When I get a boyfriend/girlfriend” “When I have more money”

There is no better time to start but now. This is about loving ourselves in the journey not at the destination.

I do think it is important not to lie to ourselves. We don’t need to try to convince ourselves that we are perfect because that will make it easier to feel self love. This process is not about becoming perfect in any way, it’s about loving ourselves, both the best and worst parts. It is about loving ourselves unconditionally.

I am all for personal growth and trying to better myself but at the same time I can give myself love, respect, and a little bit of grace through out that process. The journey of learning, growing, and essentially becoming the best version of yourself is life long, and you will be a whole lot happier if you can learn to love yourself during the process.

So let’s start with yourself right now. No immediate changes are necessary to begin this journey of self love. 

I know that if you are being honest with yourself, everyone can find at least one thing they love about themselves. Whether its a 

Physical attribute

• your smile, 
• your hair, 
• your shape, 
• your style…

your personality 

• how funny, 
• Kind,
•  generous, 
•  friendly you are)

Your interests

• Your love for reading
• Hard work put towards sports
• Skills at playing an instrument
• Your creativity with art projects

There are endless possibilities of things you can focus on that you already love about yourself. I recommend writing a list of things you love about yourself and regularly reading/adding to it throughout this journey and your life. You can practice remembering these things by thinking about them while meditating, going on a walk, or doing the thing that you love doing. 

Don’t just say it, do it

To truly feel love for yourself, you have to treat yourself with love.

This concept is along the lines of “fake it till you make it”, as well as “actions speak louder that words”. The way you interact with yourself on the inside and the outside reflects how you feel about yourself. So the goal is to change your behavior to in turn alter the way you view yourself. 

Let’s start with how you treat yourself physically. 

Taking care of your body so that your body can take care of you.

It starts with things as simple as

Personal hygiene, 

• take a nice long shower, 
• brush your teeth,
•  trim your nails…

Physical Fitness

• Stretch regularly
• Go on long walks outside
• Move your body the way you want(link to another blog favorite forms of fitness)

Nutrition: fuel your body well

• Eat lots of fruits and veggies
• Avoid processed sugar
• Eat enough while also not eating too much

Mind

• Take breaks
• Sit in silence
• Journal your thoughts and feelings

Get in the habit of taking care of each part of you and your body will be strong and capable enough to hold you up even when life gets you down.  

Now how you interact with yourself verbally.

Your inner dialogue should be the same if not better than the way you interact and speak with the people you love most in this world.  

Do you go around saying things to people like, “oh my you look so ugly today”, “you should have put make up on” ,“no one likes you”, “you are so dumb”? 

Yes? 

Thank goodness you are reading this, maybe the reason you are so rude to others is because you are projecting your discontent from within onto others.  Hopefully some self love will help you love others.

No? 

Why not? It’s probably because you have too much respect and care for others to say negative/hurtful comments. So then why don’t you have enough respect and care for yourself to not say those things?

Changing your inner dialogue takes a lot of intention and time. You have to be aware of when those negative thoughts come up, shut them down, then replace them with something honest and positive. 

If you have a lot of negative outer dialogue coming in from other people, its important to set boundaries, stick up for yourself, and remove yourself if necessary(but that is a whole blog post of its own that I will hopefully write soon).  

With all that being said, I just want to remind you that this is a journey. Learning to love your self as well as self-love practices both take time, patience, and persistence. You are beyond capable of what you think you are and will be so grateful for the work you put in now.

Comment questions to answer down below:

What are some ways you show self-love?

What self-love practices are you going to begin implementing? How?(set specific goals!)