How does one practice self love? Many people don’t know how to show love, and this is owing to the fact that these people don’t love themselves. For anything positive to be manifested in your life, you must first love yourself and believe that you’re capable.
Let that not be you. Love yourself best so you can love others well.
You have life, you have time-two of the best resources anyone can have to learn to love yourself.
Why Should You Practice Self Love?
You have to love yourself, my friend. Never think lowly of yourself because if you do, that is going to have a rollover effect. The rollover effect is people will treat you based on how you treat yourself, and that reveals itself through your actions or words. People do pick up on these things.
You cannot love yourself and associate yourself with people who are negative and always bringing people down. By doing that, you’re setting up yourself to fail because whatever you do, the outcome is going to be affected by the energy that surrounds you, the environment.
If you attract negativity, for sure, that negativity is going to creep in your life in some shape or form.
You don’t need people to validate you; you should do that yourself-speak positive about your own self because that is what matters most-affirmation from self, not others.
To Be Able To Practice Self Love You Need To:
1. CHALLENGE THE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
When a negative thought pops in your head that has doubt, you shouldn’t own it.You have the ability to question that negativity and challenge why am I not able to love yourself? Why am I not able to accomplish my goals in life?
Everyone has that little voice that pops up now and then that tests our ambitious thought aiming to trick us into believing that we can’t achieve much or that we are not worth loving. Affirm yourself: God created you for a purpose.
God loves you and has created for a time like this. He took time to create you because you are special and he has honored you with gifts to be the best that you can be. God loves you and that’s the best love you can receive -unconditional love.
Time is one of the best resources we have, therefore once you have a goal in mind, work towards it consistently and believe you will accomplish it over time. Once achieved, it will improve your self-esteem.
Do this by immediately swapping the destructive thought for constructive for example:
I) Destructive: I have always failed, I’m not going to try that.
Constructive: I don’t know the outcome of this unless I try. It won’t hurt to try.
II) Destructive: I’m not qualified so it doesn’t even make sense I try.
Constructive: I’m going to equip myself, learn what I can learn so I can apply myself.
III) Destructive: No one in my family accomplished anything so nothing is wrong if I follow the pattern, no one really will batter me, we are all on the same level.
Constructive: I want to be an innovator, someone of influence and example to my family. I am going to break this cycle.
You get the gist. Yes?
Basically, never settle for the negative thoughts.
2. ARE YOU A REALIST OR PERFECTIONIST
Failure is not the end road of things. Look at failure as a pathway, you take a turn, it leads you to a dead end. You turn back and try all the turn and the lanes until you reach your landmark.
You may not get there in the time and approach that you would’ve imagined, but you reached there realistically. You won’t be hard on yourself when you take this perspective.
Know that everything will not be perfect neither will it be close to perfection at the 1st, 2nd or 3rd try but that doesn’t mean you should give up.
Realistically, no one is perfect and as a result fails now and again, but always aim at the best that you can do.
Do not aim at “just enough” that is needed, but be the best that you can be because every time that you fail, you learn something new.
From that standpoint, you can then take a different approach to achieve your goals; therefore, your best will become greater, no matter what.
3.STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Having a love for something and developing it is good. However, we all should try something completely different from what we are used to. This takes us out of our comfort zone, and when this happens, it causes us to be alert because we don’t want to make any mistakes.
It can be tricky as we may be tempted to give up but we should always strive for the best.
Trying something new and being successful form an improved impression of ourselves, something we don’t need from anyone to feel. We identify our own success and thrive on it.
This tells us that we are capable of achieving anything as we practice self love. This then raises us to think do we really have the limitations that we think we have or is it that we impose these limitations on ourselves? Self-improvement is a daily gradual process, not an overnight fix.
Step out of your comfort zone, little by little embrace your individuality and practice self love consistently, don’t expect too much at your first attempt but ride out the failures, ride out the disappointment and see them through; gear up and relaunch your attack, you will get better results.
This will consequently teach you how to have a greater sense of confidence.
4. END THE NEGATIVE COMPARISONS
At some point in our lives, and even currently, people take their lives and compare it with the lives of others. This often leads us to feel depressed because we compare to people’s lives who are in a better condition than ours and we tend to feel worthless, unloved, unappreciated, and the list goes on.
Why do people do this?
I mean you are capable of having anything you want. No one is better than anyone, and we all can achieve anything we want. You shouldn’t grudge a man for his success because you don’t know their journey. As you practice self love, pride yourself in knowing that you are unique and can’t ever be anyone else.
On a final Note
This comparison will never end because no matter how good you become, there is always someone who has achieved more than you. I mean nothing is wrong with emulating someone and using them as a role model, but when this comparison is a belittlement of your achievement, this measuring stick should be burnt.
- Focus on making your life better, not to please people or match your neighbors’ lifestyle.
- Love yourself first is not being conceited; it’s the only way we show genuine love to others.
- Do what is best for you-living happy and comfortably achieving your goals one day at a time.
- You will be more appreciative of yourself and acknowledge what you’re capable of.
Today, change how you treat yourself and commit to getting into a habit to practice self love.
Lots of love!
