How to Cultivate Self-Love: Discovering Your Path to Self-Acceptance
What is self love?
Self love is treating yourself with kindness, compassion, understanding, and respect.
We should be our own best friend, our biggest fan, our #1 cheerleader. If we want to attract relationships with people who love us unconditionally and treat us with respect, we need to learn how to give that to ourselves first. When we deprive ourselves of love and validation, we become reliant on external sources to feel loved and validated and we give away our power.
Self love is something they don't teach us in school, so how do you cultivate it?
Here are a few ways you can get started on your self love journey.
Be your Best Friend
Self Compassion
Practicing self-compassion is also a valuable tool for self love. This means being kind and understanding to yourself, especially during difficult times, and recognizing that everyone makes mistakes and experiences setbacks. Instead of beating yourself up, try to approach the situation with kindness and a growth mindset.
Self Validate
Listen to positive affirmations everyday while you're getting ready, driving to work, at the gym, doing the dishes. Start getting used to hearing positive things about yourself. Then spend time telling yourself things you love, like, or appreciate about yourself or about being you. If you never hear anything nice about yourself, you'll need validation from others to feel good. Step into your own power and learn how to validate yourself. Youtube has every type of affirmation you can think of for free so no excuses! You can also try EFT tapping to take it a step further.
Forgive Yourself
Is there anything you feel guilty about, ashamed of, or hope nobody ever ever ever finds outs? Well they don't need to, but you need to forgive yourself for it. This can be easier if we think about if someone else had done it, as we can be more compassionate for others mistakes than our own. We might realize we were doing the best we could at the time, we didn't know any better, or we understand what we did wrong. By taking time to give yourself that forgiveness you fear you won't give in others, you can release this unnecessary "shame" that is blocking you from your potential.
Physical and Emotional Needs
Another key aspect of self love is taking care of your physical and emotional needs. Ask your body what it needs when you wake up in the morning. Let yourself rest when you need to and move your body regularly. Eating a nutritious diet, engaging in regular exercise, getting adequate sleep, and seeking support when needed are important for cultivating self love.
Boundaries in Relationships
Setting boundaries in relationships that may be draining or toxic is another way to show ourselves love. When we're not able to set boundaries with other people, we lose trust in ourselves and become resentful of them for not being able to meet the needs we haven't communicated. We neglect our own needs for others, making our body and subconscious again lose trust.
Support System
Your environment and support system are going to affect your experience and journey. It's important to surround yourself with positive and supportive people who encourage and uplift you. This could be friends, family, or even a support group. Surrounding yourself with positivity will help to reinforce and strengthen your own self-love practice.
Remember, self love is a journey, not a destination, so be patient and gentle with yourself as you work towards a stronger sense of self-love and acceptance.
