Loving yourself is the foundation for your goals, your relationships, and everything that you want out of life. And loving yourself is the perfect practice to get ready for even more love coming your way, be it motherly love, sibling love, or romantic love.
For this episode, I’ll give you ways to love yourself more and how to show and manifest self-love better. We are used to always telling people how much we love them and how much they mean to us, but rarely to ourselves. Giving too much love to others and not for ourselves can be detrimental, and if you are one of those who struggles from loving yourself, I hope this episode can help you to grow into self-love.
Without further ado, let’s get to my methods towards self-love.
#1 Mirror Work. A concept I learned from Louise Hay, mirror work is an exercise you can do in front of the mirror. Saying “I love you” to yourself in the mirror – this exercise might feel uncomfortable at first, but the discomfort presents that there is an area to improve. The logic behind this is you need to hear this from yourself so you can comprehend someone else loving you too (1:26).
I also share my personal experience through a journal entry when I first did this exercise, as someone with a high sense of self-love (4:38).
#2 100 Things I Love About Me. Write down what you love about yourself instead of focusing on what you don’t like or love about you. Once you’ve identified them, I suggest meditating whilst reading each line item as a reminder to yourself. Each time you feel beat up, you can always revisit your list and be reminded of why you love yourself and why you are worthy of love (8:51).
#3 Address the things you can change. Nobody’s perfect. If you can’t love yourself, or find it difficult for other people to love you, identify where that feeling is coming from. Acknowledge what is driving these feelings, its underlying reasons, and decide if it is something that you can address, resolve, or change (10:50).
#4 Forgive Yourself. There are some things that you can’t change or undo. Forgiving yourself can help you remove the barrier that’s keeping you from loving yourself if you are still beating yourself up for past experiences or mistakes. Recognize that whatever you did in the past is what you thought was best at that time with the limited information that you knew (12:16). Playing the same scenes in our head repeatedly make it hard for us to forgive ourselves as we re-ignite whatever emotions felt during the time. Realize that you are now wiser and better – and thus is worthy of love (14:08). You may do this exercise by:
- Treating yourself like you would treat a loved one who screwed up and felt unlovable (16:05).
- Writing a letter to the old you or meditating to the past event with the wisdom you have today (17:14)
- Focusing on something new, as sometimes the only way to let go of old baggage is creating new experiences. (17:43)
#5 Lean on your spirituality. Lean on God’s love to love yourself. Here, I shared a verse that I thought would be significant in reminding ourselves why we should love ourselves (18:08).
#6 Lean on people in your life who love you. Recognize people who cannot imagine their lives without you. Let their love penetrate your mind and heart so you you realize that you are lovable, and thus you must love yourself too (19:37).
Here are relevant links to today’s episode:
- Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life by Louise Hay | Amazon http://a.co/9TU3eFL
- Jeremiah 31:3 – Bible Gateway https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2031:3
- Mary Manin Morrissey’s Tools For Transformation Course http://www.marymorrissey.com/toolsfortransformation/
I hope that you practice self-love, as well as spread a general love for everyone this Valentine’s Day – you never know who badly needs some love or would appreciate a hug.
What are your thoughts on self-love? If you’d like to use the exercises I have outlined above in your quest to self-love, I’d love to hear about your progress, even your challenges too! You can reach me via the comments section, or email me at charlene@fromcaterpillarstobutterflies.com, I make sure to read all of them!
Thanks so much for listening and if you find this episode insightful, show your support by sharing it with people who might find it useful too. You can also show your support by subscribing and giving a rating and review to your podcast platform of choice. You can find the show on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, GooglePlay, and Podbean. Additionally, we’re on Patreon. Sponsor us for additional resources to help you grow! You can also find me on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Until next time!
[smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/fromcaterpillarstobutterflies/FCTB014_-_Self_Love.mp3″ social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” social_pinterest=”true” ]