Don’t you know how to start your self-love journey? I understand. Self-love is not as simple as it sounds. It is pretty damn hard.
And because of that, I made this awesome and FREE self-love workbook: a guide for beginners, to help you get started on your self-love journey.
But before you print it out and get started in this workbook. I will go over the basics of self-love in this post and give the inspiration you need for getting started on your self-love journey.
In this post I will talk about:
- What is self-love?
- Why is loving yourself so hard?
- Difference between self-care and self-love
- How to start your self-love journey: for beginners
- Actions
- Mentally
What is self-love?
Duh… loving yourself? Well, yes. True. Touché. But it is so much more than that. Can you tell me how you love yourself? How do you show yourself love? Exactly…. that’s where it gets harder to explain. Self-love is respecting yourself. Some examples:
- How you talk to yourself
- How you treat yourself
- Being honest with yourself
- Have boundaries for yourself
- Respecting your body
- Listening to the signals of your body
- and much much much more
Looking at these points. Do you think you love yourself? Do you show love to your mind and body? If yes, great. If no, maybe it is not that simple after all.
But why isn’t it simple? Loving yourself should just come naturally, right? Why not love the one person that matters most to you, yourself. Without you.. well, there is no you, no life, just a whole lot of nothing.
Why is loving yourself so hard?
I feel self-love is so hard for many of us because we don’t realize we are not loving ourselves. How can you do something you didn’t even realize you weren’t doing?! See how tricky this is? Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s our society that makes us believe we are never good enough. Not skinny enough, not pretty enough, not rich enough and the list continues. We are so used to criticize ourselves. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you gave yourself a compliment? And.. when was the last time you criticized yourself? Exactly, see my point?
Trust me, when you start your self-love journey, you will be shocked at how little love you have shown yourself. Even when you maybe think you are doing just fine.
Is self-love the same as self-care?
No. It is not the same. I can understand why it is confusing. Self-love and self-care are both needed and look a lot alike. However, self-love is how you speak to yourself and see yourself, and self-care is about the actions you take to take care for yourself, which yes, is an act of self-love.
Yeah okay. This is all great and all. But how do I get started? Okay Okay…
How to start your self-love journey
Actions
Evaluate how much love you show yourself and work with that as your starting point.
How much love do you show yourself? How often do you compliment yourself? How do you think of your body? Of yourself as a person? Do you like yourself? Do you think you are worthy of love and respect? Do you think you are a beautiful person?
What are your answers to these questions? And be honest when you answer them. It is okay.
Do you want a detailed list of questions and see how you score and get advice based on that personal score? Then download my FREE self-love workbook and take the quiz.
Look at the answers you gave. Does it make you happy or does it disappoint you? It is okay, don’t feel bad about it. You are here to work on more self-love, and that is a huge step in the right direction.
Use these answers as your starting point. This is how you begin your journey. After weeks, months, years, answer the same questions and you will see the progress you have made.
Recognize your patterns of negative thinking and what it gives you
If you have scored low or gave negative answers about your self-love it is time to take a close look at yourself.
Don’t be offended when I say this. But these negative thoughts you have about yourself. They give you something. How? Simple. If they didn’t give you something, you wouldn’t have them.
Maybe they give you fear, this way you don’t really have to take the steps you want in your life. Because it is scary, and we rather not do things we are scared of.
Example:
I am not smart enough to start pursuing my dream job.
What does it give you?
You don’t have to put yourself in a situation where you might fail.
But even though you think you are protecting your feelings. This is exactly the opposite of what you are doing. Because yes, now you won’t fail. But are you happy with where you are right now? Is there really a win here? No.
We all do this, and mostly we don’t even realize that we are doing it. That is why is it so hard to let go of negative thinking. But I have an exercise for you to help you recognize and handle these negative thoughts.
I want you to observe your thoughts. Just observe.
Whenever you have a negative thought, write it down. Be brutally honest here. Do this for a few days.
After you have your list of negative thoughts write down what they give you. Write down if these thoughts actually help you? Do they make you feel better? Have they protected you from hurt?
Change these negative thoughts into something more positive. What thought instead of this one, will actually benefit me?
Don’t think you have to get “rid” of every negative thought. You are human, and we all have negative thoughts and will keep having them. This is just about recognizing them and gain insight into how they work for you.
Write down your goals and how you will achieve them
Now that you know what your starting point is and what your negative thoughts are. What is it that you want to work on? Just saying “I want to love myself more” is too broad.
Write down at least 3 goals and write down all the steps you need to take for you to reach this goal.
Example:
- I want to love myself more
- I want to speak more kindly to myself
- I will give myself a compliment every day
- I will write down my compliments in a compliment diary
- I will read this compliment diary before I go to sleep
- I will write down my compliments in a compliment diary
- I will give myself a compliment every day
- I want to speak more kindly to myself
And do this with every goal you have. You can even make it more specific by adding days and times you want to do something. In my free self-love workbook you will find a special planner for your goals.
Make your goals so specific and realistic as possible.
Mentally
Stop comparing yourself to others
If anything is bad for you, it is comparing yourself to others. Remember one thing. People only show you what they want you to see.
Luckily a lot more people are open about their struggles. And that is great and inspirational. But still, no need to compare yourself. You need to believe that you are good the way you are.
Comparing yourself to others will only make you feel insecure and will definitily not help you on your self-love journey.
Instead of comparing your life to others, use their accomplishments as inspiration.
I wrote an article about how to stop caring about what others think of you, I think this will help you as well in this.
Practice gratitude every day
Gratitude is so important. It makes us appreciate what we do have instead of looking at what we don’t have. Don’t get me wrong, it is perfectly fine to have goals and dreams. But don’t forget to be happy with what you have at this moment too.
Now, it is “easy” to write down what things you are grateful for, and you should do that for sure. But I want you to write down what you are grateful for about yourself too. At least 1 thing a day. You can do it. Come on.
Speak kindly to yourself (you hear everything you say)
It is true. You hear everything you say. You are always listening.
So make sure, when you are listening, you speak kind to yourself. Life is hard enough, you really don’t need to be your own enemy.
Someone told me this once “you don’t have to bring yourself down, others will do that for you”. Ouch. But also, true. Unfortunately.
Not all people of course will do this, but you will meet people in your life that will bring you down. That is the way it is. So, make sure you are not one of those people.
Practice speaking more kindly to yourself by for example giving yourself 1 compliment a day. When you wake up in the morning you can look in the mirror and say “I am proud of myself” or “you are beautiful”. Feeling a little weird doing this?
Now tell me. Why does it feel weird to tell ourselves that we are beautiful, but we are totally fine with saying how we are ugly or our thighs are too fat. Get my point……
Forgive yourself for the wrongs you did, and make amends if needed
In our lives, we all will do something that we will regret. I am sorry, it is true. Nobody is perfect, and that includes you and me.
Feeling guilty can weigh down hard on our souls. If you have the chance to make amends, do it. Swallow your pride, and just do it.
Maybe the wrong you did, was not to someone else, but to yourself. I know I did myself wrong many times.
I deal with an eating disorder and I am guilty of not always taking good care of myself. I wrote a letter, as my body, to myself. And it was really healing. Sounds silly, but it worked to start forgiving myself and be a bit better every day.
Set boundaries for yourself
Boundaries are incredibly important. Why? They teach others how to treat you.
When you don’t have boundaries, when you let people walk over you, do you show yourself love? No, not at all.
If you don’t show yourself love, that is your message to the world. “I am not worthy of love”. And we all know, that this is not true. We are all worthy of love. Yes, YOU are worthy of love.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I myself have recently discovered that I was not always showing love to myself. Hell, I was showing myself no love at all for months, years. We are always learning and improving.
Boundaries will help you to protect your self-worth, and show yourself and others that you value yourself and that you expect others to value you the same way. If that isn’t self-love then I don’t know what is.
Stop waiting and start your self-love journey today!
No more waiting. Just start. Use the tips I gave you, and you will be making a lot of progress soon.
I hope you will love yourself more soon, because even when I don’t know you, I know you are worthy of it. We all are. Don’t think you are not worthy of love. Ever.
Don’t forget to download my FREE self-love workbook: the ultimate guide to help you start your self-love journey HERE!! I am POSITIVE, this workbook will help you so much. And when I say FREE, I mean FREE.
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