SELF LOVE

How often do you catch yourself criticising or putting yourself down?

We do it without thinking most of the time. With social media sites such as instagram we spend the best part of our day scrolling through hundreds of images comparing our bodies and lifestyles to others, mainly strangers we have never and will never meet. We end up focusing on our flaws and where we feel we lack, this is where learning and finding self-love is so important.

Self-love is a relationship to yourself, it's not something you can strive to achieve. It’s about making your own rules, putting yourself first and deciding what’s important to you. Self-love is about taking time to connect and to better understand you and what feeds your soul. It isn't something you can get from outside, it comes from within. It is what gives us the power to start again for being hard on ourselves, for feeling like we're messing up in all aspects of life and that we're a rubbish human being. I have days like this. I have fat days, I have days I feel I could have done better at life. I have weeks like this. The one thing that keeps me stuck is that I forget to take that breath, to remind myself that I am human, I deserve everything I want from life, that I am me and that, that I am pretty amazing.

In a world telling us how to be better humans, full of articles telling how to be better partners or giving us new life hacks because we've been living life all wrong it's difficult to remember to accept that we are who we are. We hold onto these outside influences. We give them too much power over our self esteem, they become our scale of self value. This results in us putting too much pressure on ourselves, forgetting ourselves and living life following the expectations of others. We believe that by fitting into what is portrayed as socially acceptable we will we happy and life will give us what we want. The thing is we are not responsible for the happiness of others but only for our own. It takes time to search deep with to find that love. It's always been there it's just difficult to find and when we do find it sometimes we forget it's there. Self-love is a not a destination, it’s a practice we use to create a foundation on which we can build a happy life. If you don't love you, it become difficult to accept the love others give to you.Imagine how you treat yourself on a daily basis as if you were another person, in a relationship with you.

Are you good to yourself? Is your mind kind to your body and soul? Not sure what it looks like to love yourself? Here is what I’ve learned self-love is…

1. Choosing ourselves, even if it means we leave a party before anyone else or being unsocial

2. Expressing what we truly feel, think, or want to do

3. Giving our body the nurturing, rest, exercise, and comfort it needs

4. Wearing clothes that make us feel good and fit our personality instead of wearing what we feel is expected

5. Building a life that we love while we are single instead of waiting for the person to sweep us off our feet

6. Accepting ourselves with the good, the bad, he days we feel gross and unlovable

7. Making time to do whatever we love, just to play, without worrying about wasting time

8. Owning our inner and outer beauty and complimenting ourselves without feeling guilty or arrogant

9. Not dragging ourselves to a dark place when we know that we can only learn from the past

10. Spending some quality, connected time with ourselves - switching off electronics, taking a break from social media

11. Using discretion when sharing ourselves with others.

12. Trusting the path that we are on and that we create our reality

13. Not blaming our parents for our current issues, and looking for ways to heal our wounds and change our dysfunctional patterned behaviors by reaching out to ministers, therapists, coaches, and healers.

14. Following what our intuition says instead of being so much in our heads and listening to our egos

15. Staying in our integrity, keeping ourselves in check regarding patterns such as lying, withholding, and pretending.

16. Allowing ourselves to dream big and to feel deserving of these dreams

17. Knowing how we’re spending our emotional, mental, financial, and physical energy, and what energy do they bring into our lives

18. Taking responsibility for all of our experiences

19. Not labeling ourselves with others’ opinions of us but also having the courage to see if there is some truth in them

20. Learning to set boundaries

21. Allowing ourselves to make mistakes

22. Recognising that we, deserve to take up space on this planet just as who we are right now

23. Loving and accepting ourselves even when we fail miserably at some of these self-love goals

I am not perfect and I there are days when I don't remember even a single point on this list but what I am learning is that by putting myself at the top of my to-do list every single day the rest falls into place. If you take care of you and your needs, life doesn't feel quite so hard.Self love is loving every single part of yourself inside and out in a work that teaches you that you are flawed and could do better. In that world be the person who loves how perfectly imperfect you are!!