A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Haruki Murakami
Has it ever occurred to you that you need to love yourself more in order to be happier and more satisfied with your life? Have you ever thought about developing a self-love mindset?
Most often we give ourselves a hard time, we’re not kind to ourselves. What we tend to do is criticizing. We tend to criticize ourselves more than we praise ourselves. Have you noticed that?
Even if you lose 2 pounds you’re not satisfied that it’s not 4 pounds. You’re angry at yourself that you ate a bit too much today, that you didn’t run far enough, that you didn’t work hard enough to get a promotion, that you don’t look good in your dress any more and so on.
We don’t like saying good things about ourselves. It’s easier to be negative. We got used to it so much that we think it’s normal to behave this way.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you changed your current mindset to a self-love mindset? Instead of beating yourself up you would start to love and accept yourself more. Aren’t you curious how your life would change?
Sometimes a small change can make a big impact. It really is important what we say and think to ourselves. If your head is full of negative thoughts and you don’t like yourself then probably your outlook on life will be negative as well and you won’t like other people just like you don’t like yourself.
That’s why practicing kindness to yourself is very important to start feeling better and moving towards your life goals with a more positive mindset.
Guided Meditation For Self-Love
Why Is It So Hard to Love-Yourself?
The reasons may be different. One of them could be our disappointing experiences.
With time we discover that we’re not the smartest and the most beautiful people in the world. We are judged by others and we start to negatively judge ourselves. We don’t have such a good job as our peers from school and we don’t look so great like the models on the covers of the magazines.
Very often we’re not supported by our own family members which only deepens our self-doubt. We’re criticized by teachers, friends and other people around us which robs us of our self-worth.
And even if something positive happens in our lives we tend to pay more attention to the bad and negative things. We’re more likely to remember when someone scolded us rather than praised us.
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Your Self-Love Journey
Self-love journey is not an easy journey especially if for many years of your life you hated, blamed, criticized and simply didn’t like the person you saw in the mirror every day.
But with steady practice you can change it. You can change how you view yourself and what you think of yourself. Of course you will always have bad days during which you will think bad things about yourself because you messed something up. That happens to all of us. It’s normal.
But remember that self-love comes from within. You don’t need someone’s approval, good grades at school, high-paying job, or any other external accomplishments to love yourself or feel worthy of love. You just need to shift your mindset.
Here’s How You Can Cultivate a Self-Love Mindset
Start doing what you love doing If there are things that you’ve always wanted to be doing than do everything to finally start doing them. Remember that you don’t live forever and one day it may be too late to do what you still can do today. You cultivate self-love by fulfilling your dreams. If you’ve wanted to start writing a book for a long time, maybe it’s high time to do it!
Always find some time for yourself Each day you should find some time for yourself and spend this time however you want to rest a little bit. Your own well-being should be a priority. Don’t give all your energy and time to others. Every now and then you need to put yourself first.
Practice positive affirmations It’s all about repeating positive statements that are supposed to change your subconscious mind. There are affirmations for different purposes: self-confidence, travel, mental health, self-worth and of course there are self-love affirmations too. Find some time each day to practice affirmations in order to change your mindset.
Learn to accept failures Failures are the keys to success because each mistake teaches us something. Accept the fact that you’re human and failures will happen to you from time to time. And it’s nothing bad. Of course it will hurt you when this happens to you, but you should be aware that in the long run failure equals growth.
Compare yourself to yourself Probably you’ve heard many times that you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to others because it breeds only negative emotions. However it’s easier said than done. People always compare themselves to other people and it’s hard to stop it especially now when on social media you can see people boasting about their nice bodies and perfect lives. Comparing yourself to others will only make it more difficult for you to start loving yourself. That is why you need to remember that the only person you should compare yourself with is yourself. Are you a better person today than you were last month? How has your life improved compared to your life from 6 months ago? What do you know today that you didn’t know some time ago?
Read next: How to Live a Simple Life and Be Happy
Don’t believe your negative thoughts Your thoughts are just thoughts, nothing else. They are not beliefs, they are not truths, they are only thoughts. Question your negative thoughts. Take them with a grain of salt. Try to explain to yourself that they are not true. They come and go and it is you who decides how long they stay in your head and what power they have over you.
Don’t listen to your inner critic We all know this voice inside our heads which criticizes us way too often for different things. Our inner critic is very strong and lets us know about itself almost every day. But you have a choice to listen to it or to ignore it. If your inner critic speaks to you next time, don’t believe it and say to yourself something positive, something that may be the exact opposite of what your inner critic is telling you.
Forget about perfectionism Perfectionism and self-love don’t go hand in hand. It’s hard to love yourself when you’re too demanding for yourself and you cannot reach high standards which you set for yourself. What happens then? You beat yourself up because you feel like a failure, you start to lose your self-worth because you think you’re not good enough. Striving for perfectionism is great if you want to achieve professional success for example, but it’s detrimental to developing a self-love mindset.
Talk to Yourself Like You Would to Someone You Love Think for a while how you would speak to your children. Would you criticize them, tell them that they’re stupid, ugly, not smart enough, or would you rather try to be supportive, would you rather try to cheer them up and explain to them that everything’s going to be fine. Try to treat yourself the same way as you would someone you really care about. Click here to read more.
Learn to forgive yourself If something happened it happened. You won’t turn back time. Beating yourself up because you did something wrong won’t change anything. You will probably be replaying the situation in your head many times over but remember that this situation or whatever happened is alive only in your head. Learn from the past mistakes and forgive yourself, accept that you’re not perfect – it really is important on your self-love journey.
Write a love letter to your future self Or you can create a list of the things you love about yourself – in this case just think about your strengths and qualities and write them down on a piece of paper, in a notebook or a journal. As for the love letter, you’re supposed to do the same. Write down in the letter how awesome you are. Write about the things you admire and respect yourself for, write why you’re proud of yourself and why you love yourself. Then read this letter whenever you feel down just to remind yourself how great you are in reality. Praise yourself in the letter. Use this site to send your love letter to the future.
Is self-love an answer to all the problems that you have in life? Of course not. Is developing a self-love mindset going to make your life better?
When you learn to love yourself will you become a happier person and will you start to enjoy your life more? Probably you will, but I’m sure that this approach doesn’t work in all cases. Sometimes, in order to make a radical change in your life you need to talk to a professional specialist who will guide you on your journey to self-love and a better life in general.
But even if self-love doesn’t solve all your life problems, practicing it will teach you to have more respect for yourself and will increase your self-worth. Even if these were the only benefits of developing a self-love mindset it’s still worth it.
You may also be interested in: 1. Memento Vivere [Remember to Live; Your Time is Limited] 2. Time Flies. Remember Death. 3. How to Manifest Something by Writing It Down 4. Positive Affirmations For Women
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