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What the hell is self-love? When I first heard this term, I thought it was the way you felt about yourself and that’s a small part of it but nowhere near the full story. Love is not just a feeling, it’s also an action word and we show the people in our life that we love them by what we say to them or about them, the actions we take towards them, and the way we treat them. When I started to think of self-love like that, things really started to change.
“Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth.”
([https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/self-love-and-what-it-means )]
As you can see from this definition, self-love is a feeling of appreciation for yourself but that feeling grows from the actions we take that support ourselves and our growth.
Self-love and self-care are the foundation for good mental health and well-being. Getting better at self-love will make a lot of the other things you’re trying to change in your life a hell of a lot easier. Yes, I mean exercise, yes eating right, yes healthier relationships, yes boundaries, yes pretty much whatever it is you’re trying to change. It will be so much easier if you lay a solid foundation of self-love.
Self-love is also a skill. Most of us are not born with an inherent understanding of how to love ourselves and a lot of us aren’t taught how to do that in the families we grew up in. Many of us don’t even realize self love is something we need to do unless we either had evolved parents who taught us these things or went through a crisis and were forced to learn them.
The trick is to start treating yourself as you would treat a close friend or family member. This is someone that you really care a lot about and respect. How would you be loving to someone like that? I have a few ideas. Let’s look at 7 key ways you can start your self-love journey today:
1. Protect Yourself
Your personal safety and security is the most basic level of self-care. In order to love yourself, it is imperative that you learn to protect yourself from danger or harm. You’ll never do this perfectly, none of us do, but it will help you to start thinking of yourself as someone worthy of love and protection.
One way to protect yourself is to set healthier boundaries with the people in your life. This is a place we often start in therapy. Setting healthier boundaries will help ensure that you have healthier relationships which are highly correlated to greater life satisfaction and better health. It’s really important and life changing.
2. Care for Yourself
The next level of self-love is caring for yourself through things like nutrition, movement, hygiene, and mindfulness. These are foundational elements to an optimal self-care program and making them a part of your regular routine will help you to build habits that are more supportive of a loving relationship with yourself.
For some, like myself, this can be a long journey. I was so far from caring for myself that it has taken years for me to get to a truly healthy place with my nutrition and exercise specifically. That’s ok. Being in process is the valuable part of the journey and how we learn and grow. Plus any extra care is better than none so whatever you can muster the energy to do, will help.
3. Forgive Yourself
It’s time to forgive yourself and to let go of the things in your past that you are ashamed of or embarrassed by. Literally, we all have these things. They’re different for each of us but we all have something. You don’t need to keep carrying it though.
You can practice new ways of thinking about these things including honoring that it’s painful and believing that you did the best you could at the time. The truth is you can’t change the past, all you can do is try and do better going forward. That’s true atonement.
4. Listen to Yourself
One of the biggest commonalities I see between the folks I work with is their tendency to be hard on themselves and to minimize their own pain or experience. This is not self-love! Yes sometimes self-love is pushing yourself to get through (sometimes it’s not) but it is never being hard on yourself or not listening to what your instincts, emotions, or sensations are telling you.
A lot of people who struggle with mental health issues have difficulties trusting themselves because of past issues with their symptoms or bad experiences. This is common. Most of them also have much better instincts than they give themselves credit for. We have to use discernment but tapping into your inner wisdom is another habit that will support greater self-love.
5. Support Yourself
You should be your greatest supporter/cheerleader. If not you, then who will do it? However so many of us, instead of encouraging ourselves, get stuck in patterns of being hard on ourself in order to push ourselves further or faster. This is ass backwards and only sets us up for cycles of shame that prevent our growth and happiness.
Yes, sometimes you will need to push yourself BUT it should always be done from a place of love and support and not from a critical or judgmental place. It’s the spirit by which you do it that matters. So start practicing a more uplifting and encouraging attitude with yourself.
(If you need help in this work, I really LOVE the High Five Habit by Mel Robbins
6. Be Nice to Yourself
Continuing on this theme, I also suggest taking a look at how you talk to yourself, about yourself, to others and in your own head. When a therapist first asked me this question, I was honestly pretty horrified at how I spoke to myself. I would have NEVER spoken to anyone I cared about the way I spoke to myself. If you spend a week or two watching your own thoughts, I imagine you might see the same.
The good news is there are proven strategies to help you change your self-talk. So many people think that their thoughts just are and aren’t something they can modify but the truth is your thoughts are very malleable to change. It just takes some time and repetition which many people find monotonous. BUT this work is so valuable and will improve your quality of life so much that I think it’s worth it.
7. Give Yourself What You Need
Lastly, give yourself what you need. This means working to identify what you do need for your optimal well-being and giving yourself permission to need them and make them a priority. This is the heart of self-love. Seeing yourself in the best possible light even when calling yourself out on your nonsense, listening to your own needs, and working to give yourself those things, even if other people don’t always like it. That is treating yourself like a true friend.
Self-love is such an important part of good mental health and, like we said earlier, will make any other changes you want to make in your life easier. Want to eat better and workout? Self-love can help. Want to have more satisfying relationships? Self-love can help. Want to set better boundaries? Self-love can help. I think you see where I’m going with this.
Self-love is something a therapist can help you to build and understand better. If you or someone you know wants professional support you can learn more about depression here, fill out our new client inquiry to work with us for counseling, or contact us with any questions or for resources. If we can’t see you, we will work with you to find someone who can.