5 Ways to Love Yourself Better: Self Love 101
This post will cover why the self love journey can be so difficult to start and 5 tips for how to actually show yourself love.
“Love the skin you’re in.” - it’s become so cliche.
Or how about the broken record of “you just need more self love.” ?
Although both hold true, I repeatedly heard this advice from people who were trying to help when I was suffering at my lowest points with self love.
I wanted to scream (while also crying and cursing), HOW!? Yes, “love yourself”..I get it, but how do you “love yourself?”
What are self love exercises I can adopt?
How do I journey the emotional healing process?
Is there a self love coach who can walk me through loving myself again?
Take action toward self love
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Misunderstanding Self Love
The conversations in my head more often than not sounded like this:
“You tell me to love myself more, but did I just not come with self love instructions?
Or maybe I’m just a broken hot mess and incapable of ever healing?
Why can’t I get this seemingly simple thing like everyone else?”
In school we were taught writing, reading, and arithmetic, but somehow the course “How to Love Yourself 101” was left out of the curriculum.
What is self love?
Self love is defined as “regard for one's own well-being and happiness.” To me, it means
making yourself a priority,
setting appropriate boundaries,
tuning into your own mental health,
fueling your mental and physical wellbeing, and
positively regarding yourself as valuable and worthy.
So I’m here to answer the HOW part of self love that always seems to come up missing. I hope you walk away understanding that you aren’t broken, incapable, a hot mess, or anything less than amazing.
All you need is to be able to see that the "how" is going to be a 'consistency game,' that compounds over time. And, instead of adding on more and more "to-do's" to the list, it actually starts by removing & unlearning the stories you've repeatedly told yourself, and detoxing them from your mind. Then, you can start to add more back in. The removal process is a must!
Your relationship with yourself sets the tone
When I coach clients on self love, we talk through the following five pillars for showing yourself love.
1. Quit focusing on other people and express gratitude for what you have.
We expend an enormous amount of time and energy (especially as women!) looking at other people’s bodies, financial situations, family life, and successes. The sad reality, most people’s public visual is just a curation of what they want others to see and believe about them.
In fact, we often look so longingly at others that we forget to be grateful for all the blessings we do have. Comparison steals joy. Envy doesn’t look beautiful on you, so unless it’s inspiring you, keep your eyes on you!
As you express gratitude for what’s going right in your own life, you will feel more alive, less stressed, and more energetic because your energy won’t be wasted on something you have no control over.
The only control you have is what you choose to focus on.
2) No one is you, so own that!
No one in this entire universe is you. How inspiring is that? No one laughs like you, speaks like you, has your unique talents and strengths. No one is you (this is worth the repetition).
I want to give you an analogy to get my point across on how amazing this is!
Let’s use the Oscars as an example. Think about how women seek to purchase a custom piece of clothing designed and produced specifically for them so that it can’t be replicated, so that they’re the only one to wear it.
To have a custom, one-of-a-kind piece of clothing is considered unique and special and also highly sought after (alongside a pretty price tag to match). Yet, outside of the couture world, we often try to become copies of other people. We don’t own the same individuality that’s so highly regarded in the spotlight.
Here’s why: We’re taught to conform, to seek imitation and replication.
Here’s the solution: We need to adjust our mindsets to think like that custom built piece and quit trying to be imitations of one another.
Wear your uniqueness, and rock it proudly! The more authentic you learn to be, the more magnetic you will become.
People are drawn to those who are authentic because they radiate a different frequency.
3) Self acceptance is not settling.
In order to start the self love journey, you need to accept who you are, and what that entire package is comprised of. No, you may not be where you want to be with your goals just yet, but acceptance of where you are now is a crucial first step. Acceptance won’t keep you stuck there either, which is a common misconception.
When you ground yourself in acceptance, it’s from that starting point that your self love journey is built. Self acceptance is where you will continue to grow and evolve into the highest most authentic version of yourself as you seek to explore more of your authenticity. You’ll begin to adore who that woman actually is underneath all the layers of self sabotage, self doubt, and disguises.
My good friend, Joshua, and I talked through Acceptance on this Snap Back Podcast: “Acceptance.” Here, we covered an introduction to the season of healing. The healing journey for everyone starts at acceptance, saying it out loud, and identifying what’s in your way! I think you’ll love it.
4) Unlearning leads to love.
Your lack of self love is not something you were born with. It was something society taught you. You were born a little naked bundle of love. It’s time to peel back the thoughts, feelings, comments, and stereotypes that you have learned from living in this world. It’s time to get to your foundation of love that you were born as. If you aren’t feeling love, you are feeling fear of some sort that you were taught.
Thankfully, this can be unlearned. It’s just going to take practice, consistency, and acknowledgement that anything that isn’t love also isn’t real.
Anything that isn’t love needs to be let go of so more actual love can take its place. It’s a process of:
continuing to recognize when there is fear
reframe your brain, and
get back to love.
This doesn’t happen overnight…I repeat, this doesn’t happen overnight.
5) “Perfect” body types don’t naturally breed self love.
As women, we have a lot of pressure to look a certain way. We see this in advertising. Filters, edits, photoshop, and even procedures are available to achieve a certain look promising happiness beyond our wildest dreams.
We often think “when” I achieve a certain look, “then” I’ll be happy and love myself. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work that way. Yes, you may feel good temporarily, but that isn’t a sustainable fix to loving yourself.
It goes back to the foundation of self acceptance, and then building a healthier MINDSET (not just your body) from there.
Would you like to get in better shape? Work on makeup, fashion, and your hair? Cool, those are just going to be the cherries on the top once you master your mindset. You do this by continuing to peel back all the layers that aren’t love and replacing them with care and appreciation from deep within yourself.
It takes time to accept and love yourself, but is a lot more simple than you might imagine. It’s the removal of what isn’t love that we often forget to focus on. Instead, we think we need more of this or that to reach the 5 star level of self mastery.
Self Love Resources
As a recap: Focus on you. Quit the comparison game, or else you will wear the ugliness of envy.
No one is like you, so wear that proudly.
Accept where you are now and realize that accepting the now doesn’t mean you will be stuck there. It just means you have a baseline to grow.
Anything that isn’t love, leave it, detox it, unlearn it, remove it. It’s just taking up precious space and using up your time and energy.
And, finally, a body of your dreams won’t equate to self love. That’s an inside job from continuous and consistent practice of steps 1-5. It’s mastering the removal of things that cloud your vision. They prevent you from showing up and owning who you were made to be.
You can start to love yourself right now. Practice falling into one of these traps and realizing it immediately.
Catch yourself in it. Then remember the lesson in it, and reframe what actually happened with the knowledge you were provided above.
Soon this knowledge will become your own wisdom. It will become so natural, you’ll forget you had a deficiency in self love at all.
You aren’t broken. You aren’t a hot mess. You definitely are not incapable.
You are powerful beyond your wildest dreams. It’s time to peel back the layers and plug you back into your power!
Slay Self Sabotage & Rock Your Relationship,
Meg
Meg Smithson, Life Coach
Meg coaches women by identifying areas of self sabotage, helping them break up with the shame that usually accompanies that, and then shows them how to set boundaries around the emerging 2.0 version they want to become, and live that life, unapologetically.
Click to schedule a life coaching consultation with Meg.
