Last week I wrote about self-acceptance and it’s importance when you’re trying to be happier, healthier and more relaxed in your everyday life. For me, that moves on naturally to self-love. Once you’ve got to the point where you can accept what’s great about you as well as everything that you’re not so happy about, you can relax a bit more and just allow yourself to be. There’s less worry about what you should be doing, and you start to treat yourself more kindly. You’re great just as you are and deserve to be loved right now, without any need to change or add anything.
Making positive choices feels easier and more natural because you’re not being so hard on yourself and instead give yourself the love and compassion you deserve as a human. Introducing new habits to get you closer to where you want your life to be happens without much effort. You attract the people who can show you (either on purpose or just through their own way of being) how you could be happier, healthier and more relaxed. It can start with just accepting some parts of your self and life. Your circumstances and thoughts, feelings and how you behave, after all, change regularly, and we’re discovering more about ourselves all the time. Life’s not a race, it’s an adventure!
So, how do you love yourself? And isn’t self-love self-centred and therefore to be avoided? First of all, loving yourself doesn’t mean you are putting yourself on a pedestal. It means showing yourself the same love and care that you would your best friend; putting your needs up as high as those of your other loved ones. If you don’t look after your own needs, you’re doing yourself and the people who love and depend on you a disservice. Setting your needs aside can lead to burnout, feeling overwhelmed because you’ve maybe taken on a lot more than you can handle, and feeling miserable, unloved, undeserving and neglected. When we have these feelings, we tend to show our defensive or more guarded side, not giving as freely and openly as we would if we felt better about ourselves. We can also be less needy of other people’s attention, love and praise if we have enough love within ourselves already. So when someone doesn’t message back immediately, or you don’t receive many ‘likes’ on your post, you know it’s just because everyone has their own lives and different priorities, rather than it being anything personal against you. And even if it was, that would be ok because you’re fine and don’t need other people’s acceptance to make you feel worthy. Self-love brings inner strength.
What does loving yourself look like?
Saying no when someone asks you to do something for them when you know it’s going to cause you problems (even your children). You don’t have to be mean about it, but explaining that right now you need to focus on something else shows people that you have healthy boundaries.
Not answering a message or ringing phone just because you’ve heard it. It wasn’t very long ago that we didn’t even have mobile phones and the culture where we feel an instant need to check this rectangular object that’s like an extra appendage. It’s ok to finish what you’re doing and get to it later. It’s rarely of life threatening urgency.
Doing less and slowing down. This to me is one of the most liberating ways we can show ourselves love. The world will not end if we only manage to get three of the 10 million things done that we feel like need doing today. And focussing on one thing at a time means you’re doing it to the best of your ability. If you need help with this I highly recommend practices like qigong and meditation, where you learn to be in the moment, slow down your hectic thoughts and just be present. At the same time improving your physical, emotional and spiritual strength.
There are many ways you can practice self-love. It’s not a grand, exclusive thing that means you will have no time for looking after your loved ones. In reality it means you have more positive energy to give, more time with those you love because of the improvements to your long term health and well-being, and a better quality of life because you’re doing what makes you happiest.
Find lots more about self-love this week on my Facebook and Instagram pages.
Create Abundance – qi gong exercises, meditation and acupressure massage | Facebook
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Ruth Beech - Mindful Movement, Meditation and Art 