Self love is something that we all talk about and want for ourselves. But, how do you do it?
What are the steps? How should you go about it? Where do you even start?
I’ve been struggling with this a lot. My lack of self love started to show years ago in my friendships, any romantic situations, and even my professional life.
At the start of the pandemic, I had an “aha” moment. I literally analyzed every person in my life and thought about who I wanted to continue being around. I did a “social media detox” and unfollowed anyone I felt was necessary, and started to focus on me. I was doing at-home workouts, I learned how to cook, I even started this blog you’re reading.
Quarantine was a time where you couldn’t go out and escape your realities like you normally would. You had no choice but to sit with yourself and your thoughts which frankly, can be pretty terrifying. Spending time with yourself makes you realize who you are, who you’ve been and who you wanna be, which again, can be terrifying.
We all have an idea of who we are, and it’s so easy to see the bad and use that to describe yourself. People tend to only define themselves by all the things they don’t like about themselves, but why can’t we be all of the good things too? How can you expect to love yourself when you don’t even acknowledge all of your best assets?
Something small I think may help is to spend 5 minutes each day to acknowledge what you’re grateful for, what you love about yourself, what you’ve accomplished. You can write it, you can say it, you can think it. If there’s a day you can’t think of anything, think of 5 things that you want to accomplish, achieve, or to just be. You’ll be able to talk yourself into seeing the version of yourself you wanna be.
When it comes to self love, my biggest word of advice is to listen to your inner child.
Ever since I was little I loved writing. I used to write stories, songs, poetry, you name it. For me, I’ve learned that a part of self love is finding yourself, and what better way to find yourself than to get to the core of who you are, how you were in the beginning, what joys you found on this Earth early on.
Writing is my safe space, and as a 24-year-old woman, I look to it for comfort. Every time I pick up a pen or begin to type, the 8-year-old Kara tends to shine through a bit more. It brings me a peace that no one can really understand.
I want you to find your peace. If you like to write, sing, paint, bake, do that! The only two people you should be looking to please are your 8 year old self and your 80 year old self.
Make sure you stop listening to what others think about you or what they think is best for you. You’re not smart, you’re not beautiful, you’re not experienced, you're not ready. No one knows you better than you so why would you allow others’ thoughts to dictate your actions?
The way to love yourself is to get to know yourself and also to stand in your truth. Once you have that, no one can tell you a thing! I promise you that.
I also think the self-love conversation is always centered around relationships and how you can love yourself into a relationship. But why stop there? If you’re taking a self-love journey for the sake of a relationship at the end, I think you are missing the point. You don’t need to be in a relationship as approval to love yourself. You should love others enough to know you are not above anyone, but remember to love yourself enough to know you are not beneath anyone either.
I think when we talk about self-love, we often leave out the idea of self-help as well. You have to help yourself through hard times, while you enter new phases in life and grieve the old ones. The world can be a scary, terrifying place, and there’s no way you can navigate it without the two. We tend to go through the self-help process if we go through something difficult, when we need to grieve. They are always treated as different things, but they should both be in the same conversation.
Self-help allows you to see yourself for who you are, the good, bad and ugly. Self-love allows you to accept who you are and love yourself throughout all your phases anyway.
Take your time with this process! This is your reminder that you don’t need to have self-love all figured out, you probably never totally will as you’re constantly changing, and remember, the best answer sometimes is choosing yourself.
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