7 Realistic Self-Love Habits You Can Start Practicing Right Now
Self-love can mean a lot of different things, but essentially it means feeling good about yourself, even in moments of weakness and disappointment.
We often depend on others for validation, but it’s important to have your own internal compass. As the saying goes “How can we expect others to love us if we can’t love ourselves?” While there’s truth to this statement, it’s also true that others do love us even if we don’t love ourselves. That’s because they can still see the awesomeness within us when we can’t.
Here are some tips to help you learn to love yourself because you deserve to feel good:
- Respect Your Body
People who practice self-love respect their body’s by eating healthily and exercising. Listen to your body and work out what it needs. Is it exercise, sleep or water? Listening to what your body has to say will help prevent you from doing harmful activities and eating unhealthy foods.
2. Take Back Control
Don’t wait for others to give you permission to do the thing you want to do. Give yourself permission. You might think this doesn’t apply to you, but ask yourself, “Is there anything I want to do in life or at work that I’m waiting for someone else’s permission to do?” If the answer is yes, then make a positive change and give yourself permission today.
3. Go easy on yourself
Much of the time we can be quite hard on ourselves. We spend a lot of time beating ourselves up by thinking “I should have done this” or “I could have done that”. This is the opposite of self-love and can be rectified by simply being kinder and more forgiving to yourself.
Do you sometimes expect more from yourself than you do from other people? The truth is, we often have higher expectations and standards of ourselves than we do of others. Therefore, try to relax and don’t worry too much about things you didn’t or couldn’t do. You can’t change the past but you can make positive changes for the future.
4. Discover the sources of your energy
Look for the things that motivate you and give you energy. If you don’t know what they are, search for them, find them and do them. They might be creative things like drawing, painting, writing or speaking. Or, they might be physically active things like playing a sport, swimming, dancing or walking. You might even find energy from spending a day in bed. Whatever your sources, go out there and find them.
5. Practice Meditation
There is no better way than to relax, breathe and empty your mind of thought. Meditation offers a great time to practice positive affirmation and reflect on what you want for your life.
6. Say “No!”
Don’t be afraid to set yourself boundaries. If there’s something you don’t want to do then don’t do it. Don’t be afraid to turn people down for fear they won’t like you. There’s no obligation to take on more than you can handle. It’s okay to turn things down, even if you just don’t feel like doing them.
7. Appreciate the little things
You might not be ‘perfect’, but all of your little imperfections make you the perfect you. This might mean putting aside the judgments you have of yourself and saying, “This is what makes me who I am. And because of that, it is perfect and great.”
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