Start being intentional and actionable about how you love yourself.
Don't wait for someone else to offer you the love you want and deserve.
When we focus on self-love rather than trying to get others to love us, we build our self-esteem and break codependent patterns, which allows us to form healthier and happier relationships with ourselves and others.
These five habits will allow you to love yourself more:
1. Create ‘I am’ Statements
Just as the words we share out loud have consequences, so do the words we tell ourselves.
The average person knows around 40,000 words, and for a majority of those words we attach some sort of emotion to them. This means that the words we repeat to ourselves have lasting impact — our body picks up on our thoughts and how we treat ourselves.
The more we introduce the right words and reinforce them, the more integrity and trust we gain with ourselves.
The opposite holds true when we introduce negative words or thoughts, too. We start to doubt ourselves, feel bad for ourselves, or distrust ourselves.
The idea here is that we start to create a barrier to protect ourselves from those negative words and thoughts through creating daily affirmations.
These daily ‘I am’ statements start to drown out those negative thoughts and allow us to build ourselves up by simply being kind to ourselves and believing in ourselves and acknowledging those beliefs daily.
The most powerful words we can use to change our reality are in the words 'I am':
"I am doing my best".
"I am proud of myself".
“I am confident”.
“I am strong”.
“I am growing each day”.
So, what is the power behind those two words ‘I am’?
‘I am’ brings us authentic power, allowing our words to affirm what we already believe to be true, even if we are struggling to experience it. That truth sometimes sits way deep down, covered in layers of doubt built up by others.
By using those two words, ‘I am’, we develop our magnifying glass. This becomes the tool to view our precious minerals differently, more magnificently.
This reinforcement can be accomplished by simply writing down ‘I am’ statements daily, and it only takes a few minutes each day. Take 5 minutes in the morning to write them down, and take a few minutes to share these with your significant other, family or friends or to repeat them out loud to yourself.
The idea is to build a habit around this. If we can consistently take action on this habit, we can start to reinforce our worth and our trust in ourselves.
Eventually, we start having loving thoughts about ourselves.
2. Spend quality time alone
It’s healthy to spend time alone — stop letting people make you feel selfish for putting yourself first.
This behavior that you witness, when others make comments like this, is the other person’s needs being put first, or their happiness being put first. So, it’s not unreasonable to do the same thing and put ourselves first.
We need to remember:
We are no good to anyone else if we are no good to ourselves first.
When we think about this initial idea of putting others before ourselves, we comprise the one thing that makes that all happen: ourselves. If we are in no shape to love ourselves, how do we walk through life loving those around us?
So, what are some things that we can do to absorb this alone time? Whatever makes us feel calm, centred and happy…
Listen to music while taking a bath.
Go for a walk in nature.
Watch a favorite film.
Read a good book.
Do some crafting.
Spend time gardening
Watch the sunset.
Literally, anything that sparks personal happiness.
That's the beauty of taking time to nurture ourselves: there is no external pressure to please our group of friends, our colleagues, or anyone else. It's what we want at that moment that will deliver the greatest return for ourselves.
What are some of the other benefits of this alone time?
Our empathy grows.
When we are constantly surrounded by the same people, we grow this idea of “us vs. them”. By spending time away from that environment, we allow ourselves to see things from a different perspective, which means broadening our empathy goggles.
Our productivity increases.
A lot of the time, our needs get put on the back burner within a group, meaning we normally do what the group finds is best for a majority of that group. We therefore often end up compromising what we specifically want, which can be distracting to our own needs and goals. We’ve all been in plenty of situations where the room needs our attention or we get pulled in 90 different directions. When we step away and give ourselves some time alone, we experience less of these distractions. This alone time means it's just us and our direction.
We experience bursts of creativity.
When we are alone with our thoughts, we can create some amazing things and give birth to some creative ideas.
We build mental strength.
We put ourselves in a position to rely on just ourselves, our own thoughts, and our own strength. This means we remove this safety net of society or a group holding us up, or leaning on them for that guidance, which ultimately leads to greater independent strength.
3. Act in a way that feels of service
Get up and give yourself what you need, when you need it.
You are the most important person in your life, even though it’s sometimes easy to forget or prioritise this concept. This simply breaks down into taking care of ourselves.
Here are some questions that you can ask yourself as you search for these acts of service…
What can I do to be of service to myself right now?
What can I do to be of service to my future self?
What tasks have I been putting off?
What tasks do I need to do that will help me become more productive?
What jobs am I aware of that will provide me with pleasure once they are completed?
These services, quite literally, serve us. They center around us.
Some of those services could include…
Doing things that help us feel organised, such as scheduling our week out.
Cooking a healthy delicious dish.
Cleaning our apartment or house.
Setting up a holiday savings account.
Hiring someone to do the things we aren't good at.
Donating clothes we no longer wear.
Making our bed in the morning.
Meal prepping for the week.
Getting ahead of next week by addressing tasks early.
All of these things allow us to remove controllable barriers and give ourselves a greater chance at success and happiness, because we are taking those things that we know just tend to compound in life and are addressing them.
At the moment they may feel agonising, but our future selves end up thanking us. With all of the other complexities that come inevitably with life, we decided to take action and remove the ones we could control.
This provides us the freedom to focus on ourselves, to give ourselves breathing room, and to focus on larger, more critical things in our lives that may arise.
4. Listen to your needs and emotions
Listen to your body, and give it what it needs.
Do the things that make your body and your mind feel good.
We all have emotions, but sometimes we fail to recognise those emotions and to understand what they mean or what they are telling us.
Sometimes, we have a tendency to run away from them, and in doing so, we lose out on the learning component.
When we run from our emotions, we are pushed to judge ourselves, or to potentially turn to escapism.
Our emotions are informational, but only if we allow them to be.
Here’s a question you can ask yourself when facing challenging emotions:
"What am I thinking or doing that's causing these painful feelings of… [anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, jealousy, anger, loneliness, emptiness, etc.]?"
And BE vulnerable with yourself.
This allows you to address the root of the emotion and your reactions. It takes you on a journey to work through them.
Sometimes we are so quick to run in the opposite direction because these emotions are painful, bring back bad memories, or because they expose what we think is a “weakness”, but this is how we flex the vulnerability muscle - it starts growing when we can sit with this uncomfortableness and not label it or shame ourselves for feeling it.
This process allows us to have a larger conversation with ourselves, and these conversations invite us to know ourselves better. They allow us to love ourselves more because we're taking the time to connect with ourselves on a more intimate level, rather than turning away from it.
When we allow those negative thoughts and emotions to attach to us like magnets, they start to weigh us down overtime. They drag behind us, leaving us to feel heavier, and putting us in a position where our forward movement drags with little efficiency.
A sense of hesitation exists around almost every corner, too, because we doubt ourselves due to our pasts and the things we did or did not do.
Here’s the most compelling part of all of this: whatever that thing was, whatever misstep we took in the past, it already occurred. We went through the experience, and hopefully learned from it.
The longer we sit with that thing and allow it to marinate, the more time and energy it keeps stealing from us, and the more time it shaves off of our clock.
We need to learn to embrace our mistakes and embrace their subsequent lessons. And embrace the fact that you are human! We all make mistakes. It is not a good reason to be so hard on ourselves.
You've got to do something wrong, before you can do it right. In fact making mistakes is the most effective way to learn.
This is the very concept of life.
To live, we must learn.
We need to make mistakes.
Our imperfections are what makes us unique, one of a kind.
Many of us are looking back and hurting ourselves over old mistakes with information we now have. This is unfair, because today we have more knowledge than we did yesterday or the day before.
Just remember this: when we know better, we do better.
5. Gift yourself the gifts that truly give
Now, there's an important distinction here: impulsive shopping may be rewarding for a short period of time, but mindful shopping can lead us to purchasing gifts that keep on giving.
To understand this distinction, we can ask ourselves the following questions…
What do I actually need, as opposed to want?
Am I buying myself something from a place of love, or a place of fear?
Is this gift to distract me from poor behavior or bad choices I have been making?
These questions allow us to make a clear distinction between impulse and reward.
What is an example of a reward gift?
Invest in yourself.
Maybe that means purchasing a cooking course, new stationary to complete that course, invest in coaching to fulfil a dream business, or even a trip away for a long weekend.
Personally, I like to gift myself more nurturing. My #1 mindset growth rule is, "never question spending money on health, books, or good food”.
When I look to give myself those gifts that keep giving, then, I look towards books to increase my knowledge, good food that's good for my body, and healthy choices, such as researching ice baths and investing in one.
These things drive happiness at the moment of purchase, but more importantly, they allow happiness in perpetuity.
This kind of gifting certainly can be different for each person, so be thoughtful, and remember: as long as you're gifting yourself the gifts that truly give, you're giving yourself long-term self-love.
It’s okay to treat ourselves, prioritise ourselves, and even do something nice for ourselves.
We are so tethered to this idea of putting ourselves last, but that cannot — and should not — be the case all the time. It is not sustainable, nor is it healthy.
Give yourself the love you deserve.
𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 a complimentary 45 minute 𝗘𝗠𝗢𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗗𝗢𝗠 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛 𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟 with me to find out how to truly embody the self-love you were born to feel .
♥️
Ｃａｔｈｅｒｉｎｅ
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & COACH
Catherine is a heart-centred wellness therapist, transformational coach, intuitive counsellor and mindfulness facilitator.
Catherine specialises in helping you create calm confidence, nourish your self esteem and self-love, build healthy boundaries, ditch perfectionism and people-pleasing, and get out of your own way to achieve the life you deserve.
She offers her wise words, actions, and guidance to help people connect positively with their body, mind, and soul.
Her sessions provide you with real-life the support and the readily accessible mindset tools you need to achieve this.
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