Every single moment in your life will require you to tap into self-love. Through great adversity or celebration, the core of your ability to maintain and foster personal growth comes from learning how to fall in love with yourself.
Every person is built from varying experiences, strengths, and hopes. With a little guidance, falling in love with yourself can be a rewarding and life-changing experience.
Building trust and confidence within yourself
Building trust and confidence within yourself requires more than showing up each day. It's the follow-through of deep inner knowing you are worthy and lovable that is the distinction between simply arriving versus living it every day.
Practice encouraging self talk
We spend so much of our lives giving affirmations to the people we love and care about. Sometimes, even to perfect strangers. Nurturing our own positive self-talk begins with recognizing what negative self-talk looks like.
It doesn’t have to be an overt display of appalling, intrusive thoughts. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are engaging in negative self-talk because we’re so used to undervaluing and downplaying our accomplishments. Sometimes, simply getting out of bed to “do the thing” is an accomplishment all on its own.
Treat yourself like you would treat a friend
When our friends come to us with stressors and a need for encouragement, we give them every single thing we’ve got. From flooding them with affirmations to loving them through it, we treat our friends like gold when they’re hurting or struggling to maintain.
Imagine offering yourself the same level of compassion you would a loved one. Picture yourself sitting in the chair across from you. What would you say to yourself if you were your own friend? It would probably sound a lot different than the way you speak to yourself internally.
Follow through on goals you set for yourself
One of the easiest ways to find yourself in a cycle of frustration is by ignoring your accomplishments and neglecting your goals. When we talk about goals, we often think big picture. We forget that goals must be specific, measurable, realistic and time bound.
We give ourselves a hard time when we fail to meet one of our goals instead of reflecting on what support we needed to succeed. Breaking our goals down into smaller, more reachable objectives means we’re inherently setting ourselves up for success. Bite-size goals help us step up to the next level, preparing us for the bigger leap every step of the way. When you achieve a goal, no matter how small, it is crucial to sit with that accomplishment and remember that you are capable of doing difficult things.
Developing habits that align with your goals
Our days are filled with tiny habits that we’ve developed over the course of our lifetime, and everyone has experienced the tricky nature of unraveling habits that do not serve them.
Know your limitations
One of the greatest ways to identify what habits can be worked into your day-to-day is by understanding your limitations. If you’re in medical school pulling 15-hour days, it may not be realistic for you to hit the gym at the beginning of the day. There are, however, other ways to incorporate wellness into your routine.
Maybe this looks like creating a block to do yoga towards the end of your lunch break. Or maybe you use the gym on your days off. No matter your circumstance, choosing habits that work well within your schedule and obligations gives you a much higher chance of incorporating and contributing to you reaching your goals.
Log your accomplishments
Another way to positively reinforce the development of goal-supporting habits is by taking note of when you successfully engage. It takes around a month for a habit to become part of your routine. And every single chance you have to celebrate the tiny victory of showing up for your yoga class or meal prepping on Sunday nights is an opportunity worth taking. This is what self-love looks like. Taking small steps that add up to greater steps.
Nourish your mind and body
When it comes to falling in love with yourself, there is a core theme that spreads throughout your journey. Showing up for yourself is not easy.
We carve out time, space, and energy for everyone in our lives and at the end of the day, there’s little to nothing left in our cups for us to drink from. When we become intentional about nourishing that cup, we afford ourselves a chance to grow into the best person we can be.
Take stock of your daily practices and commitments
If it fits, let it sit. Learning how to be confident and how to love yourself means creating time to explore your needs in a greater depth. Self-love is the best love, and loving yourself first means making sacrifices that put your needs at the top of the list.
If you don’t have time because you made a commitment to volunteer, consider holding off until the next season to gift your time to someone else.
It’s never too late to begin
The trek to learning how to love yourself is not paved or landscaped. It is up to you to take the first step in asking for the guidance that will ultimately provide you with the necessary feedback to take your self-love to the next level. If you’re curious about how to get started, connect with my website for a consultation on how life coaching can help you.