As a fully developed individual and as an adult, you need to know how to love yourself. Self-love is the best gift to give to your self. A lot of people find it easier to love other people than to love themselves, but one thing that you need to grasp and understand is that people will only love you as much as you love yourself.
If you don’t love yourself, other people can sense it in you. And this makes it hard for people to love you. This article is all about educating you on the simple and practical ways to start loving yourself dearly starting from today. There are a number of practical and sensible ways in which you can love yourself. We will be giving you tips below;
How To Love Yourself Step 1 – Believe that you are awesome.
Perhaps you grew up in an abusive household, where you were constantly made to believe that you were a terrible person. Perhaps you have heard statements like, ‘you can never amount to anything good’ or something like this, ‘you are useless!’. These statements as damaging as they sound to the hearing, actually do cause a lot of havoc in a person’s psyche.
Once these statements are uttered about you, you start to doubt yourself. You start to question and ask yourself if you actually have any potential to amount to any good. This is the after effect of those damaging and negative statements. For some people, it actually gets to them that they lose all sense of self-esteem, and then truly believe that they are worthless and useless. At that point, they would have stopped loving themselves. They have given other people the power to dictate to them, how to feel about themselves. After that, they lose confidence in themselves and really start to hate themselves.
How do you stop this and learn to love yourself?
Start to forgo all of those negative beliefs and notions that you have had about yourself. Manage to rewire your psyche and beliefs to see yourself as a positive human being. Not as a negative person. Start to think positively about yourself. You can try repeating these statements below daily every time you wake up, ‘I am awesome!’ ‘I exude positive vibes’ ‘I love me so much!’ ‘I am unique and full of life’ ‘I am a successful and compassionate human being’. Your first step to loving yourself is through debunking those negative beliefs you have had about yourself and start having positive feelings and beliefs today.
How To Love Yourself Step 2 – Find your own happiness within you.
The second step in learning to love yourself is to know that nobody can give you happiness. Money will not give you happiness, neither will your earthly possessions or the people in your life.
What makes a happy person is that you personally decide to ‘be’ and ‘stay’ happy no matter what the situation may state around you. You can be happy from within by always having positive beliefs about yourself just like the first point explained above, and also by deciding to stay happy and optimistic.
When you decide to not be depressed or sad by your present state or situation, you are being optimistic in that way and you are also planting positive vibes in yourself. And these positive vibes will result in your overall happiness state.
In order to love yourself, you need to be happy with yourself and ‘by’ yourself. Don’t look for happiness outside but instead, search within you and locate your own happiness. Happiness is not supposed to be found outside but to be found inside yourself. Seeking happiness outside will only result in disappointment, which will only cause you much more self-loathing and hate.
So the second step you need to take in your path to finding yourself and loving yourself is to find your inner happiness. Search within you, it is there. This second step is a very crucial step in your self-loving process. You can’t be depressed and self-love at the same time. You can’t be sad, extremely sad, and love yourself at the same time. I believe this is why severe depression could result in suicide. This is because the person is not happy and therefore has no love for themselves anymore.
How To Love Yourself Step 3 – Learn and try to have fun by yourself.
Part of self-loving is learning to have a good time by yourself. You don’t need someone to help you have a good time. Part of self-loving is giving yourself a good time. Treat your self to special treats for example, you can take yourself out for a treat like going to the movies by yourself, take yourself on a walk, go jogging, you can go and see the sunrise, watch the sunset, cook yourself your delicious and favourite meal, have a movie marathon, buy that beautiful piece of clothing you’ve been eyeing, buy that shoe you have been eyeing.
Basically just do the things that you love and those will make you feel relaxed and happy. If you are a fan of movies, treat yourself to your favourite genre. Just enjoy yourself by yourself. You don’t need people or friends or family to teach you how to love yourself. Or how to have a nice time. A key step to loving yourself is your ability to let yourself have a good time by doing the things you love. Don’t rely on people or your friends to do this for you. Everybody has their own life and everybody is trying to sort out themselves. Make it your own job to sort out yourself. Start by loving yourself.
Find out those things you do to enjoy yourself, your skills, passion and what you love. Spend time understanding your body and believing in whatever skills and talent you posses. This way, you can build to build the momentum of happiness and eventually loving yourself – DeeDee
How To Love Yourself Step 4 – Appreciate what you have.
On your path to self-love, you have to grace yourself with gratitude, because gratitude is appreciation.
In order to self-love, you need to be happy right? Yes.
But in order to be happy, you need to be grateful for what you have. If you aren’t grateful, you will start to resent your own life and indeed your own self. You can practice gratitude every day through mindfulness meditation. Just close your eyes and say things like, “I’m grateful to God that I’m alive today!” “I’m grateful to God that I’m in good health!” “I am grateful to God because I can put food on my table.”
Just state these things and feel them. Gratitude is very, very important. Thank God for the little things.. For the good health you have, for the empathic being that you are, for your intelligent brain that helps you to make the money, for your family, for your friends, for the ones you love, for your children, for your spouse, for your partner. Thank god for His infinite and ever abiding love for us all. Just be grateful for the little things.
If you’re an atheist, you can thank the universe for the things you’re happy to have in your life, you can thank the universe that you are finally learning how to love yourself, you can thank the universe for the gift of life. And well, just make a list of the things you are happy to have in your life and be grateful for them. The happy and sweet part of gratitude is that it prepares you for greater things to come. Be grateful for what you have so that you can have more. Gratitude is indispensable when it comes to self-love. They go hand in hand. Another way to love yourself is that you must be grateful for what you already have now.
How To Love Yourself Step 5 – Take care of yourself and treat yourself right.
The fifth point you should consider when it comes to self-love is to take good care of yourself. By taking good care of yourself, we mean that you should take care of your earthly and physical body. Do not neglect your body. If your body is clean and healthy, it will be much easier to work on your mind and soul so that they can also be happy and healthy.
When you take good care of your body, it is a sign that you are happy with your body image. Change clothes regularly, dress well, brush twice a day if you have the time for the two times in a day brushing, exfoliate your skin regularly, use a honey scrub, get a massage, get your pedicure and manicure done, try to look good every time! When you feel like you’re truly taking care of yourself, there is a sense of self-confidence that comes with it. When you are clean and healthy, it gives you confidence, esteem, and peace. Depressed people usually tend to not see a point in taking care of their bodies. But in order to leave the self-hating phase, you need to work on your image. Work on your self-image, work on your body image, work on your soul and you will be happy with You.
How To Love Yourself Step 6 – Celebrate your smallest victories as well as your biggest accomplishments.
No matter how small you think an achievement might be, celebrate it. By celebrating your little wins, you are appreciating yourself and also encouraging yourself to work harder for greater wins. When I tell you that you need to appreciate even the smallest things that you have done successfully, take my word for it. Don’t say because it is not big enough or not noteworthy enough, then you will not celebrate it.
Every single hurdle you successfully cross in your life deserves an applaud by you. Proudly give yourself an applause. Maybe you have just successfully completed a project you have been working on for so long, why not buy yourself a treat like ice cream pizza or shawarma to treat yourself for this accomplishment?
All these little things are key to self-love. Be happy with yourself and your accomplishments. It’s amazing the kinds of things the mind is capable of. If you helped an old lady across the road, celebrate it! Yes! As funny as it is, it is a victory! You know why? Not many people would do that. You graduated from college? Celebrate it! Just got a new job? Celebrate it! Got your contract approved? Celebrate it! You have to celebrate every single one of your wins in life in order to be fully happy. This helps a lot in the process of loving yourself.
How To Love Yourself Step 7 – Don’t hate anyone or yourself.
Yes, this is a crucial part of the self-loving process. Some people generally hate other people and some people are hating on themselves. Why are you hating? Whether it is on yourself you are hating, or other people… Why the hate? Hatred chases away love. In order to allow love into your mind, in order to allow yourself to self-love effectively, you must do away with all forms of hate. Do not hate on your fellow human being whether you are aware of it or not. It eats at your conscience. Also in the same light, don’t hate yourself. Learn to love yourself the way you are. You are beautiful just the way you are. Forget society’s expectations and roles, you are unique. You are awesome. Tell yourself these things regularly.
If you find yourself hating on yourself, if there are physical features on your body that discourage you from loving yourself fully, know that beauty lies within the heart and within the soul. And also that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. If most of the people around you are negative about your physical look, get people that will love you for the way you look… For who you are. There are people out there that will love you still! Find your own people!
How to love yourself step 8 – Accept yourself as you are
Now, another big part of learning to love yourself is through self-acceptance.
Accept your flaws.
If you have any physical flaws that make it quite difficult for you to accept yourself as you are, then you have to reassure yourself that beauty is not all about physical attributes but instead inner beauty. When we mean inner beauty, of course, we mean beauty of character and of the mind. For these things are the things that are really important. Self-love, in plain terms, is self-acceptance. If you don’t accept yourself as you are, who will?
Above are the eight steps you should follow in knowing how to love yourself. We really hope they mean something to you. Put them to use and start your path to self-discovery and self-love. If you have other ways different from the above on how you have been able to love yourself, please share them in the comments. Wishing you all the very best.
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