Loving yourself should be easy, but for many people, it is one of the most challenging parts of personal growth. You have no trouble loving your family and your friends, but when it comes to yourself, you tend to be more judgmental and critical.
Keep reading to learn about some super easy ways to love yourself fully and completely.
Recognize and Respect Your Own Limits
The first step to loving yourself more is to identify your limits and respect them. This is a way of setting boundaries with yourself, which is often needed for people who don’t really love themselves unconditionally. Try to pay attention to your own body and when it sends you signs that something is wrong, you are overly tired, or you are pushing yourself too much. When you feel overly stressed or anxious, try to figure out why that is, and make changes to your lifestyle to set boundaries and be gentler with yourself.
Practice Self-Kindness
Treat yourself with love, kindness, and compassion, just like you would anyone else in your life who you deeply respect and care for. Think of your absolute favorite person, the person who is always there for you, who you would do anything for, who you are always kind and honest and gentle with. Now imagine that person is you, and you are going to treat yourself that exact same way. This is what it means to be kind and compassionate toward yourself.
Explore New Hobbies and Interests
You can also practice self-love by engaging in your hobbies, interests, and passions. This is not only a form of self-care, but also of self-love, because you are telling yourself that you are important and you should spend time doing things you love. Plus, it can really increase your confidence when you spend time on passions and feel accomplished as you complete various projects.
Whether it’s painting, hiking, cooking, or learning a new language, pursuing hobbies provides opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment. By investing time in activities you love, you show yourself appreciation and respect.
Give Yourself Credit Instead of Looking For Validation
The only person who should be validating you, is you. If you are looking for validation from others, or a reason to love yourself, you are doing this all wrong. Take some time to reflect on your strengths and the effort you put into your tasks. By valuing your own opinion and accomplishments, you build self-confidence and reduce reliance on others for validation. This will allow you to empower yourself and recognize how much worth and value you have.
Shift Your Mindset With Affirmations
Positive affirmations are a great tool to use for loving yourself more. They can actually help you shift your mindset and help change how you see yourself and your own abilities. The trick here is to choose affirmations that you want to be true. So, if you want to be someone who is successful at something, create specific affirmations that make it seem like you already are successful, and keep telling them to yourself. They work really well at shifting your mindset and soon you will also believe you are a successful person. This works with any area of self-love you are struggling with, like confidence, body image, belief in yourself, being worthy of love, and anything else.
Schedule in Alone Time and Self-Care
Make sure you are also prioritizing yourself with alone time and self-care! This is really important and will reinforce the belief that you are important because that is how much you love yourself. Try to fit even a few minutes a day where you can spend time alone and on your self-care, whether that is taking a nap, spending time drawing or painting, caring for your plants, or reading as you relax. This time should nurture your mind and help you feel a closer bond with yourself.
Embrace and Celebrate Your Uniqueness
Finally, you can learn to love yourself by embracing what makes you unique and special. Spend some time writing down all the things you love about yourself. If it helps, you can start by simply making a list of things that make you unique and special, what is different about you from others. Often times the things that make us “different” end up being those stand-out qualities later in life that other people love and admire about us. When you can celebrate your uniqueness, you find a new appreciation for how amazing and special you truly are.
