Experiencing Self-Love Will Change Your Life!
“Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.”
– Robert Holden
Self-love is one of the most difficult things to embrace, yet it’s the most important part of our lives. Having self-love changes our whole life and self image. If you have read my “My Story,” you know that I went through a period of depression where I felt insecure, lifeless and ashamed of my body weight. My major turning point was when I learned to love myself. Since then I have become more confident with my personal and professional decisions. It has also been a huge part of my spiritual journey as a law of attraction student.
What does it mean to have Self-Love & Self-Confidence?
Self Love means to love and honor yourself. It means doing things that align with your personal values and the goals that you create for yourself. The moment you work on loving yourself, you start to accept all parts of you and embrace your qualities to the fullest! This goes hand in hand with self-confidence.
Self Confidence is trust in your personality, abilities, your body, your gut feelings and your level of intelligence. This can impact several aspects of your life including interactions with other people, decision making and how you express yourself.
Self-Destruction & Insecurity
As someone who has struggled in the past with self-image, I discovered that entertaining fearful thoughts and feelings of insecurity can take you down a path of self-destruction. Why is that?
Insecure thoughts breed insecure behavior, such as people pleasing, judging oneself, trust issues, fear of abandonment which can lead to self-sabotage when experiencing healthy relationships. Being self-conscious tends to lead to life challenges and harmful situations because when we’re self-conscious we always expect the worst. This doesn’t allow for expanding into our full potential.
Everyone deals with insecurities
Everyone feels insecure at times. It’s normal. Use insecurity as an opportunity to grow because that’s how you become self-aware of areas of your personality and your life that you can improve. Despite those thoughts, you can still push through and challenge yourself to rise above it. Create reminders in your phone or on post-its if you have to.
We subconsciously retain the words and conversations that are shared around us, so avoid being around anyone that commonly shares outes themselves down or tends to talk badly about others. Surround yourself with people who lift you up.
How to develop Self-Love
Here are a few things that have worked for me:
- Affirmations: Self-talk is so crucial because our internal dialogue shapes how we view ourselves. I chose not to entertain any limiting thoughts. It takes 21 days to form a habit, so try doing this for 21 days or longer if you can.
- Self-Reflection: I’ve taken a lot of time to focus on myself and reflect on how to be a better version of me.
- Accountability: I am responsible for the decisions I make (especially as a leader and influencer). If I make a mistake, I own up to it and fix it. When this happens, it’s easy to use limiting language that makes me think that I’m not good enough. A big part of being accountable is acceptance, doing your best and keeping it moving.
- Stopped judging myself and others: I used to blame myself and others a lot. I stopped doing this. Judging, blaming and feeling guilty are a distraction from moving forward.
- Stopped people pleasing: This has been a game changer for me! I stopped doing things out of obligation. This can be scary, but people get used to it at some point. Remember you always have the option of finding a different community or distance yourself from people if they don’t accept your decisions.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
– Rumi
For daily reminders about loving yourself, here are a few Instagram Influencers that I recommend following: Alexandra Elle, Mary Jelkovsky, Sydney Grace and Neva.
What’s your status with self-love? Leave a comment below.