Self Love

I decided to do this post because I am aware that Valentine’s day is around the corner. Although they are many who will be spending the day with their significant other, there are others who will spending it alone. Don’t worry my single-tens, I am here to remind you that self love is the best love. Whether you are single or not, self love is more important than any other type of love. The type of relationship you have with yourself actually determines the type of people you surround yourself with and the type of relationship you will have with them.

This is highly important with your mental and emotional health, because the more you love yourself the less negativity floats in your mind. Think about… Do you think all the bad things you say about yourself and your life would occur or occur as often if you love yourself more? These anxious, stress, and hurtful thoughts are the results of how we view ourselves.

I want all my readers to know that you are beautiful inside and out. I want you to know that you are amazing and there is no one as wonderful as you. Although you may not be perfect, you are perfect the way you are. It’s your imperfections that makes you a beautiful soul. Don’t hide or mistreat that gorgeous spirit within you. Claim and rejoice it.

I know for a few of you, my words are just words. I get it. I tend to roll my eyes on positive affirmations and motivational words time to time. So the best way to believe every single word I have type is to actually feel it. How can you feel it? By taking steps to do so. But what steps are required to take in order to love yourself some more?

I have found a 30 day challenge that’s all about self love. Yes, I am aware this February only have 29 days, but that’s mean you can have 1 skip day. I found this challenge from http://www.radicaltransformationproject.com. I hope you participate and boost up yourself self esteem. Because you don’t need a lover to tell you that you are an incredible person. You just need yourself.

Week One: Reflection

This week your going to want to spend some time journaling and get clear about what your negative and limiting beliefs are. A limiting belief is something that you believe to be true that holds you back from reaching your full potential. People usually struggle a lot with this while dealing with depression and had a lot of limiting beliefs like “I’m not smart”, “nothing I do is very good’, and “I won’t ever be able to have a healthy relationship”.

Limiting beliefs are not fact and that means we can choose to change them. Over time I’ve replaced my limiting beliefs with empowering ones. I now tell myself things like “I am an unstoppable force for good” and “my life gets better and better”.

Some common limiting beliefs are:

I am not as good as other people
My life is always going to be difficult and unfair
I’m not smart enough
Other people have advantages that I don’t have
I’m not the successful one in the family
I don’t deserve love and happiness
Men are liars and always treat me badly
I don’t have the resources to do what I really want to do
I don’t deserve money

The first step to replacing your limiting beliefs is to identify what they are and how they are holding you back. Once you know what is holding you back you can start to heal your relationships with yourself. You not only want to get clear about what your limiting beliefs are, but you also want to identify how that belief has held you back so far in your life and how it will negatively impact your future. The goal is to convince your subconscious mind that your limiting belief will cause you pain and prevent you from living the life that you want to live. Once your brain understands that the belief is no longer serving you it will be easier to form new empowering beliefs.

Journal Prompts:

What negative beliefs do you currently hold about yourself?
How have those beliefs held you back?
How could your life have been better if you didn’t have that belief?
How will this limiting belief impact your future?
What would it feel like to live free of this belief?
Is this belief an indisputable fact?
If you could replace this limiting belief with anything what would it be?

Week Two: Gratitude

Learning to be thankful for what you already have is one of the best ways retrain your brain to look for the positive things. In fact, there have been studies that show having a gratitude practice can actually change your brain. This week I challenge you to make a list of ten things you are thankful for every single night.

The idea is not to write big things on your list. There are things we can be continually grateful for like our family, job or house. Yes, you should be thankful for those things but you don’t want to include the big things on this list. This list is all about appreciating the small everyday things that we often take for granted.

Things like a really good cup of coffee, the fact that it was beautiful out on your lunch break or that someone did something helpful at work are all good things to put on your gratitude list. This exercise is about training yourself to notice all the little things that you have to be thankful for. By taking the time to write down the good things that happen to you every day your training your brain to look for the good things in life and all day long your brain will be looking for blessings to add to your list later that night.

Want extra credit? Challenge yourself not to complain this week. Giving up complaining is one of the best things I ever did for my relationships and mental health. Think about it, when you complain you’re not only choosing to focus on the negative but you’re also demanding other people focus on it too.

Week Three: Vision

Having a vision for the future gives you a purpose and a direction for your life. Without a vision you tend to not care about yourself, because I didn’t have a purpose or direction in my life. Everything will start to shift when you choose a purpose and decided to get to work.

Helping other people with their mental health through my blog become a huge part of my own journey. Having a purpose drove me to start taking care of myself and doing better. Before I got clear on who I was and what I wanted to do it felt like nothing really mattered. I couldn’t ever get myself to stick to a self-care routine because I didn’t have a vision for my future.

I needed a stronger WHY to help me really commit to taking care of myself. Journal on the prompts below to help you get clear on what you want to do in your one life.

Create a bucket list. Make sure to include all of the places you want to see and experiences you want to have.
What is the purpose in your life? What drives you and excites you? Create a mission statement around this.
If you knew for certain you could not fail what would you do?
If a genie appeared and gave you unlimited wishes what would you ask for?
What motivates you when you don’t feel like doing anything? What do you want to remember when you don’t want to keep going?
If you could do anything what would be your perfect day?

I suggest creating vision board. Finding the perfect pictures and phrases to represent the vision you have for my life. If you want some inspiration for creating a vision board check out this video or watch this workshop.

Week Four: Habits and Goals

I believe that building habits is the best thing you can do for self-care. When something is a habit you do it automatically without thinking about it.You can build anything into a habit from keeping your house clean and organized to working out at the gym every day. A lot of self-love talks about doing something for yourself one time (like doing a face mask or getting a massage).

I think that building strong habits takes self-love to the next level because you are regularly doing things that will improve your life and set your future self up for success. What could you do every single day that would make your life better? I recently decided to give up drinking alcohol regularly and it was one of the best things I could have done for self-care. It took me a really long time to decide that I needed to give it up because so much of my social life involved drinking.

I didn’t want to admit that it was negatively impacting my mental health and holding me back from reaching the goals I had set. It was hard to stick to at first but now I’ve built new habits around going out and not drinking. I feel better than ever and I encourage you to start building new habits to help improve your mental health too.

What habits do you currently have that negatively impact your life?
How would giving up these habits impact your future self?
What habits could you add that would positively impact your life?
How would creating these new habits impact your future self?
What daily habits would improve your quality of life?
What would your ideal morning routine look like?
What habits are you committing to building or breaking this week?

Once you have your new self-care plan setup and you know what habits you want to build and what you want to break I recommend setting some goals. Setting quarterly goals is helpful because you’re setting goals 90 days at a time. First, figure out what you want to achieve in the next year. Then figure out what you need to do in the next three months to move towards that goal.

Here are some journal prompts to help you set your goals.

What do you want to have achieved by this time next year?
What do you need to do in the next 90 days to make progress on this goal?
What do you need to do this month to make progress on this goal?
What do you need to do this week to make progress on this goal?
What do you need to do TODAY to make progress on this goal?

I hope this four-week self-love challenge helps you start feeling better and living the life you want to live. These practices have really helped people on their mental health journey and have been key in helping them learn to manage my depression and anxiety. I hope the following tips and encouraging words helped you out in your self love journey. I know we can learn to love ourselves. We just have to adult one day at a time. xoxo