We aren’t born with an unhealthy perception of ourselves. We love ourselves and we never doubt how amazing and awesome we are until OTHER people tell us to doubt ourselves, and not love ourselves. It doesn’t matter what we look like, or what job we have, or what school we attend (or don’t attend) - we all end up falling out of love with ourselves at one point or another.
It happens to everyone at some point.
Valentine’s Day is around the corner and with all the gushy lovey-dovey stuff around us, it can compound your negative feelings about yourself. Here’s what we need to remember: it’s okay not to always love ourselves. But, we need to know how to fall in love with ourselves after disliking ourselves for one reason or another. Life is going to knock us down often, and we need to love ourselves through the good times and the bad.
Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to learn how to fall in love with yourself all over again. Here’s some tried-and-true advice for learning to reconnect with yourself.
How to Love Yourself
Most of us out here have absolutely no idea how to love ourselves. Does anyone really teach you how to love yourself? They do tell you ways to pamper yourself with baths, chocolates, and a massage. It’s always nice to pamper yourself, because you deserve it! However, when the world is beating you down and you feel like hating yourself, you need to shift gears in order to love yourself!
Improve Self-Talk
Talk to yourself the way you talk to others. This is code for: speak kindly to yourself! If you start to tell yourself you aren’t good enough, or worthy of good things in life - shut that sh*t down. Instead, think about what you would say to your best friend, or your impressionable teenager - and say that kind of positive stuff to yourself.
Create a Growth Mindset
Embrace the knowledge that you don’t have to be perfect to be allowed to love who you are. When you’re faced with a garbage situation, find the good in it. When you allow yourself to feel the world around you, you have two options: let it bring you down or allow it to push you forward. A garbage situation doesn’t define who you are but when you make a conscious effort to learn from it and grow - you’re creating a growth mindset…which will empower you.
Find a Purpose
When you have a purpose in life, it gives you reasons to get up and start your day every morning. Sometimes the purpose can be as simple as documenting your feelings on a daily basis. Other times it can be something on a grand scale like starting a business. Either way, your life’s purpose provides you with the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Seeing the big picture will cut down on all the small things you tend to punish yourself for doing.
Self Love on Valentine’s Day
Don’t get me wrong, you should love yourself every day. However, if you’ve been hating yourself lately, you may be dreading Valentine’s Day. Hear me out, though: Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to get your self love back up-and-running!
Travel ALONE
Traveling alone pushes you out of your comfort zone. Even taking one night away from your regular routine gives you some time to do what you want to do, when you want to do it in a place you want to be doing it.
You can learn a lot about yourself when you aren’t deciding on what to do with a partner, or friend, or child. You may find that going to McDonald’s isn’t really where you want to eat, it’s where you end up going because your kid loves fries. And hey, I actually enjoy reading a great book as I sit in my robe on the terrace instead of watching Anime on Netflix on the living room couch, like my partner prefers.
Dinner for ONE
Cook what you want to eat, or order out. Heck, head out to a restaurant and enjoy a quiet meal alone eating what you want to eat! Go wild and enjoy dessert with your meal, because you deserve it. You work hard all the time, and you should have a beautiful night out eating the foods you crave, instead of heading to the same place you always go to because someone else prefers it.
Detox (from Social Media)
Take a day off from looking at your social media accounts. We tend to compare our lives to the ones we see on social media. We forget that those perfect pictures are nonsense - no one is sharing the low parts of their lives. They only share the highlights.
They also use filters to make the high points of their lives seem even more awesome. It’s just not real life. But our brains love to play tricks on us and seeing those images has us hating our lives, and ourselves.
Live Your Ultimate Day
Have an epic day in your mind that you want to live? Make it happen. Have you ever wanted to be a tourist in your own city? Do it. Or just spend the day doing all of your favorite things!
eat your favorite foods
drink your favorite drinks
watch your favorite shows
read your favorite book
visit your favorite local spots
break the kids out of school and play hooky
nap all day in your favorite old t-shirt surrounded by your pets
Just live your ultimate day and treat yourself, because you’re awesome and deserve it!
Love Yourself & How Loving Yourself is Necessary
None of us will make it through life without some days where we aren’t loving ourselves. It’s human. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t spend more days in love with yourself than not liking yourself. Changing your self-talk and mindset aren’t always easy, and you may have no idea where to start.
Sometimes you need a little professional help to break the routine and reframe your thinking. Learning to love yourself isn’t easy and it’s not something that you can accomplish in one day. Baby steps help but so does talking to a therapist. A professional can help you learn to love yourself and empower you to grow. Plus, we provide you with solid reasons on how loving yourself is necessary in this thing called life!