Self-love tips for everyday practice

Talking about self-love is easy. Knowing everything about self-love is good. Thinking about self-love is amazing. Practising self-love? That’s hard. 

What is self-love?

According to the smart one’s self-love is a healthy, appreciative relationship with oneself. This can mean slightly different things for each person, but self-love is being kind, accepting, forgiving, and loving to yourself. 

How can you be kind, accepting, understanding, and loving with yourself?

Here are a few practical self-love tips you can build in to your days

Journaling morning and night

Feeling gratitude is a powerful self-esteem. When you feel grateful, you appreciate your life more. Taking 10 minutes in the morning and before bed to write down 5 things that you are grateful for will “force” you to think through all the things that are amazing in your life, and you are thankful for. One of these things should be your body, your health,and your wonderful mind. 

Write down at least 3 things why are you grateful to yourself today.

Check out these cute journals:

Practising awareness 

Being aware means we are in the present. Most of the time, we’re either thinking about the past, what we should have done differently, or how much better our life was back then. Or we’re wondering about the future, planning, waiting, fantasising. None of these are real. To be able to understand and accept, we need to know how we feel, why we feel that way, how are we in our body and mind. Check in with yourself 3 -5 times a day. Just stop for a minute and concentrate on yourself without judging yourself. How is your mental state? How are you feeling in your body? 

Set a reminder and pause. When you’re waiting in a line, or have nothing to do, instead of scrolling on social media, take the time to check in with yourself. 

Nourishing yourself

Do at least one thing every day, what you do only for yourself. One thing that fulfils you. One thing that you enjoy, calms you, comforts you, motivates you, makes you happy. This can be anything. Workout, cooking your favourite meal, meditate, go out for a walk, read your book, have a nap, take a bath etc. Do this without feeling quality! If you are caring with yourself, then you will be able to give even more to your loved ones. Don’t forget, you can’t give something to others what you don’t have yourself. 

Talking to yourself as you would talk to a friend

In our heads, we are always in a conversation with ourselves. We are just endlessly judging, criticising and commenting ourselves. “I failed again. I can’t believe it, how can I be such an idiot. Why I’m so weak? Why can’t I be more like x and y is? “ Imagine if you would talk to your friend like this. Would you be still friends? When your friend makes mistakes, what do you say? “Don’t worry, next time you will do better. It’s not the end of the world. I’m sure you can fix it.” So be kind and less harsh on yourself, just how you would be with a friend. Be confident enough to compliment yourself. The little wins do matter. Highlight them. 

Extra self-love tips

BALANCE. Create your balance. Inner balance first. If you feel balanced within yourself, this balance will have a reflection on your environment.  Write down your prior values and stand by those.

I hope these tips will help you where to start. I would be happy to hear your experiences, write to me here.

Renata