What Is Self-Love?

Self-love means we hold our well-being and happiness in high regard. It means we invest time in looking after our own needs and not sacrificing our physical and mental health for others. We can start to cultivate our self-love by taking steps that support us physically, psychologically and spiritually.

We have to remember that the longest relationship we will ever have is with ourselves. So treating ourselves with love and care should be our number one rule. For when we do this we also tend to have healthier boundaries when dealing with others. Self-love therefore is the best investment we can make in ourselves and for our life.

But it is also an investment that can have ripple effects to others we have relationships with too. From family, friends, our children and our partner, all will benefit from the fact that we love, care, trust and respect ourselves first and foremost. But what happens when we neglect to love our self?

What Happens When We Don’t Have Self-Love?

A lack of self-love affects our entire life and sets up complications for our physical and mental health. We tend to be more self-critical, have low self-confidence, self-worth, and unhealthy boundaries. Our resilience is low so that any challenges we face seem even more difficult. If we make even the simplest of mistakes we tend to see ourselves as failures. We can feel as though we don’t have full control over our life.

We treat our mental and physical health poorly. Skipping meals or overeating. Putting our self last on our long to do lists, we may not even take any time off for our self to recoup. We may reach for sugar, caffeine, alcohol, drugs, or other unhealthy forms of distraction to cope. All of these can lead to complications with our physical and mental health, including depression, anxiety, sleep issues, stress, and eventually burnout, to name but a few.

Reviewing the above complications we can see why it is so important that we cultivate our sense of self-love again.

How Can We Cultivate Self-love?

Some areas that can cultivate self-love are listed below. This is where you can start to rebuild self-love into your life. Some habits are easier done than others but all take time and patience with our self. Give yourself this time now. Yes self-love is based upon creating small habits in our daily life that all add up. So let’s get started.

1 Basic Self-Care

The first tentative step on our journey towards self-love is through implementing a basic self-care plan. We have to start meeting our own self-care needs on a daily basis. By this I mean eating regular meals, drinking water, getting adequate sleep and exercise, etc. I have a full list you can use to get these habits in to your life here

We have to recognize the importance of this basic self-care list to our mental and physical health. Keeping ever increasing busy schedules can only lead to an increase in our stress levels and a lack of sleep.  This will only lead us to burnout in the end if left to continue. A good basic self-care routine will be your foundation to help keep your mental and physical health in better shape.

Remember give yourself your time now. You deserve better. So build in each small basic self-care habit on a one by one basis, this will give you the best chance of success at making these changes. If you’d like help with this then check out my workbook The Building Blocks Of Self-Care.

2  Boundaries.

A healthy set of boundaries is vital for a balanced life. Being able to set limits with people is an important part of those boundaries. But all too often when we become stressed we forget to do just that. That’s when our self-love and self-care can go out the window.

Re-establishing our boundaries is another step on the road to self-love. People with clear boundaries have a better sense of identity and self worth. They engage with other people who have healthy boundaries and delete negative people from their lives.

People with healthy boundaries are not afraid to ask for what they want, need or express their own ideas and thoughts. They are comfortable saying no when they need to. These people feel self-confident even when they make mistakes as they don’t see these as personal failures or set-backs but something to learn from.

While you work through adding the basic self-care habits into your life you are also learning to set healthy habits with yourself and others. You are making the statement that you are worthy of this self-care and your time. To do this we have to learn to take back some of the time we give to others.

We can do this by reviewing our priorities and learning to say no. These can be hard to do at first as we are probably so use to saying yes to everyone and everything. Part of self-love is to become more discerning with who and what you spend your time and energy on.

Again take your time as you review your priorities and begin to delete or minimize your time spent with those surrounding you. Review the links on healthy boundaries, deleting negative people, reviewing your priorities and saying no. Take your time and build in each new habit slowly for more success.

3  Self-Compassion.

Cultivating more compassion in to our everyday life can be learnt. It is best to begin with ourselves as we can have the greatest empathy for others but that is not the same as compassion. Empathy doesn’t always lead to the healthiest of solutions when it comes to helping ourselves and others.

The starting point though always has to be learning self-compassion through taking care of ourselves with some basic self-care including meditation, deleting negative thinking and healthy boundaries. I’ve outlined how to build self-compassion in to our lives here.

4 Self-Forgiveness.

I believe self-forgiveness is at the heart of our serenity and moving on with our lives. I believe it is also a fundamental part of self-love. We sometimes forget that we do have to forgive ourselves too. It is usually our lack of self-forgiveness that holds us to the past, to our guilt and shame and fears from the past.

We need to deal with all of these issues as part of self-forgiveness and let them go, along with the past. That is a lot of hard courageous work and may require professional support, so please reach out if you need to. I’ve outlined how you can help yourself to build more self-forgiveness in to your life here.

5 Self-Acceptance.

It can be hard to let go of any false persona we have created. But we must do so in order to learn self-acceptance and build self-love in to our lives. Real friends and family will accept you just as you are. They will not want you to change just for them in order to fit in.

We often seek out external validation when we don’t feel good enough. We want to fit in, to feel as if we are part of the “tribe”. Therefore any shortfalls we feel we may have are mitigated or eliminated by being included in this tribe.

We forget that there are really no shortfalls or imperfections at all. It’s all just an illusion we were told in order to be accepted. This was often by people who had their own issues. We are not to blame for this, it can be scary to let go of what we have known and stand up for our true selves.

Self-acceptance does get easier the more we practice it. We find our self-love, self-confidence, trust, respect and sense of self-worth have been rebuilt. I’ve outlined more on building our self-acceptance here.

6 Building In Our Positive Supports.

Life can have its ups and downs. During those downs we really need positive people who will understand, listen and support us more than ever. Everyone, no matter who we are or who we think we are, needs four types of support in their lives. These supports must be positive and meet our informational, social, tangible and emotional needs.

There are a number of benefits of having a strong support system in our lives. These can include improvement to our physical and mental health, our self-esteem and overall life satisfaction also increases. I’ve outlined how you can build these supports into your life here.

Investing Time In Our Self First.

What better way to invest in any relationship than to invest in ourselves first. Think of self-love and all those small daily habits of self-care as your oxygen mask on a plane. We are instructed to place our own oxygen mask on before helping someone else when we board a flight. We could very quickly become incapacitating if we didn’t. So why do we think we can continue to push ourselves further and further without some self-love and not collapse? Take the time to consider this the next time you ignore your own needs for the sake of others. Are you working from a healthy, loving, place when you do?

Work With Me

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. In fact I would strongly advise you to reach out for counseling if you, or a loved one, have recently received a diagnosis.

If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.