A guide to help you learn how to love yourself.
Loving yourself is a concept that doesn't come automatically to everyone. Maybe you weren't taught how to love yourself or maybe you learned that loving your neighbor is more important than loving yourself.
However, loving yourself isn't selfish. In fact, if you don't have enough love for yourself, you'll have a harder time giving it to others.
Fortunately, you can learn how to love yourself more each day with these 10 powerful tips.
10 powerful tips to love yourself more every day.
1. Believe that you can love yourself.
It starts with what you believe about yourself. If you believe that you are not worthy of something, then it will become true for you. Maybe you don't believe you deserve a promotion, or a raise, or that hot guy with a great personality. You've already convinced yourself that no good will come to you and the Universe will support you on this.
Your core beliefs guide your thoughts, actions, behavior, and personality. We start learning them from a very early age, which is why core beliefs can be hard to change.
But if you want to learn how to love yourself more, you have to believe that you are worthy of love and that you deserve it.
It's not going to happen overnight, but becoming aware of your beliefs can help you release your limiting beliefs about love. The more you practice believing that you can love yourself, the more real it will feel to you.
Here are the steps to get you started:
- Write down all of your beliefs.
- Identify any limiting beliefs.
- Create new beliefs that feel loving and empowering.
- Release your old beliefs.
2. Accept yourself where you are right now.
When it comes to judging our characteristics and traits, sometimes we can be our own worst critics. For instance, do you criticize yourself for not being enough or not doing enough?
I'm certainly guilty of this.
This is why self-acceptance is important when it comes to loving yourself more.
You don't have to wait until you have the perfect body, face, partner, job, or salary to love yourself.
If you did, you might have to wait a very long time.
Accepting where you are in life right now is one of the first stepping stones to loving yourself.
3. Face your fears.
Fear is a blockage to love. So is having resentment, anger, blame, jealousy, shame, and guilt. They can create patterns in your life that are negative and manifest in different forms and situations.
The only reason we have the emotion of fear, according to the experts, is to protect ourselves. In the past, fear helped us to avoid clear and imminent danger. Now we use fear to protect ourselves from something that exists only in our minds.
Most of the time, fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Nothing more.
If you can face your fears, you'll be more willing to overcome them so you can make room for love instead.
4. Live in the present moment.
Living in the present moment makes us aware of our emotions, behavior, thoughts, and how we interact with the world.
Awareness is an act of self-love because it allows us to be present with ourselves and cultivate kindness, compassion, and love.
Mindfulness is one way to practice being more aware of yourself and being in the present moment.
You don't have to meditate to practice mindfulness, although a few minutes in the morning can be super helpful.
You can be mindful while you're doing your chores, walking (one of my personal favorites!), eating, or even driving.
5. Get to know yourself.
Knowing who you truly are is a self-love practice because you learn about how you think, what you like or don't like, and everything else that makes you tick.
The best part is, it's easy to get to know yourself!
You can make a list of answers to the following questions:
- What do I love?
- What is my dream job?
- Where do I like to spend my time?
- If I had no limitations, what would I do?
- What are my strengths?
- What are my weaknesses?
- Who do I admire and why?
- Where do I see myself in a year?
- What would stop me from getting what I want in life?
You can answer them all or answer a few, but taking the time to get to know yourself opens the way to loving yourself.
6. Stop comparing yourself to others.
People have a natural tendency to compare themselves to others. This is something I do myself.
Comparing yourself to someone else will just make you feel bad, so it makes sense to stop playing the comparison game so you can focus more on loving yourself.
One way is to unplug from your electronic devices so you can stay away from social media and any platform that will make you compare yourself to other people.
You can do this for a few hours to give yourself some time to recharge and reconnect with yourself. I like to do this once a week for 24 hours as a way to give myself a reboot.
7. Practice gratitude.
Gratitude is a powerful way to increase positive emotions like self-love. When you express gratitude, you become aware of the things that are already present in your life.
They are the things that make your life more joyful and meaningful.
You don't have to make a list of everything that you're grateful for. You can practice gratitude by simply saying one thing every day to yourself or in a journal that you're grateful for.
8. Embrace imperfection.
It seems like perfection is the standard anywhere you look, like the products we buy, movies we watch, and social media accounts we follow.
Therefore, these standards make it hard to practice self-love because it tells us that we need to be perfect to even be accepted.
Perfection can hold you back if you're afraid of making mistakes or looking bad. It can keep you from going after what you want in life, even from truly loving yourself.
This is why embracing your imperfections is a great way to practice self-love because it allows you to accept yourself for who you are, flaws and all.
One way to embrace your imperfections is to define your core values and core beliefs because they keep you anchored to the things that are most important to you in life.
Here are examples of core values and core beliefs:
- Creativity
- Love
- Peace
- Human life
- Safety
- I am smart.
- I am capable.
9. Boost your confidence.
Confidence is something that people struggle with, but it can foster positive emotions like love.
When you're confident in yourself, you're more likely to step out of your comfort zone and go after what you want. Confidence makes you more resilient and can enhance your performance.
One way to boost your confidence is through positive self-affirmations. Affirmations are acts that help build your self-esteem and self-worth.
When you say your affirmations, make sure they're in the present tense. Here are some examples:
- I am worthy.
- I am more than enough.
- I have something valuable to contribute to the world.
10. Bring more joy into your life.
Joy is an emotion that uplifts you and makes you feel good. People who are joyful are happier and more satisfied with their lives.
This is why it's an act of self-love because joy is just plain good for your well-being. One easy way to create more joy in your life is to make a joy list.
A joy list is a list of all the things that bring you joy. Once you write them down, all you need to do is practice them!
More articles to help you love yourself more:
Self care Sunday ideas to help you relax, indulge, and enjoy.
11 simple ways to establish a healthy morning routine.
Wabi Sabi: what it means and how it can improve your life.
Last thoughts on loving yourself.
Learning how to love yourself can be hard sometimes, especially if you believe that you don't deserve it somehow. This is why it can take some practice before you truly love yourself for who you are.
The good thing is, there are simple but powerful ways to love yourself, like believing you deserve love, knowing yourself, being in the present moment, and embracing all of yourself, including your imperfections.
Practicing self-love, even in small amounts, every day will help you love yourself more over time.
I hope you found these tips to love yourself more every day helpful! What are your tips or practices to increase self-love? Please leave a comment below!
