Some would have us believe that to love and care for ourselves is selfish. That is simple not true. We need to start seeing self-love as acts of love and self-care in our everyday life. The choices we make each day can be based on acts of self-love. From meeting our basic self-care needs to who we decide to surround ourselves with.

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. It’s the best investment we can make in ourselves also. But 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.

What Self-Love Is Not.

Sometimes we can confuse self-love with other people’s concepts. These concepts get in our way of us seeing that self-love has a basis in self-care and thus lead to better mental and physical wellness. To help remove this uncertainty let us look at what self-love is not.

It Is Not Selfishness.

At some point self-love and self-care became equated with selfishness. Placing the focus on the self was seen as obsessive, narcissist in some way and thereby selfish. Therefore self-love had to be removed and stamped out of us at all costs.

But self-love requires us to examine our own faults and weaknesses as much as our positive attributes. We are required to face our inner demons. It can be a tough road to do this. But it will lead to a greater sense of self-worth, compassion, empathy, self-forgiveness and trust in the end. This inner examination leads to a healthier relationship and sense of compassion for others also. For how can we have a healthy relationship or compassion for another if we do not have for ourselves first?

It Is Not Entitlement.

Entitlement can also all too often be confused with a sense of self-love. Nothing could be further from the truth. People who feel entitled believe they are entitled to something, or someone, regardless of any effort or merit. They can be overbearing and seem very self-confident. But these people in fact often have low self-esteem, insecurities and often operate out of a sense of fear.

So self-love has nothing to do with deserving “the house, the job, the money, the lifestyle”. It is more to do with a high sense of self-esteem and having an internal sense of self-worth.

It can be important to change your mindset here a bit and see that self-compassion, self-care and self-acceptance are part of your basic needs. Just as much as food, water and shelter. They all contribute to our sense of self-worth. Once we can recognize that, then we see that self-love and self-care are a fundamental part of our self-worth as well.

It Is Not An Excuse.

Self-love and self-care can be seen by some as an excuse to indulge ourselves, escape situations, responsibility or accountability. To not act as a grown up so to speak. But self-love is not exploiting others, being neglectful of others or ourselves.

But self-love and self-care do help us to hold our boundaries with ourselves and others. Holding our boundaries may be seen by some – negative – people as getting in their way of manipulating us. They won’t appreciate it when we start to create boundaries and can accuse us of using self-love as an excuse.

Boundaries teach us that we all have limits and that we can reach out for help. Yes we can look after ourselves both mentally and physically and still be there when needed in a healthy way for others.

What Self-love Is?

Some areas that explain what self-love is are listed below. This is where you can start to build self-love into your life. Some habits are easier done than others but all take time and patience with ourselves. Yes self-love is based upon creating small habits in our daily life that all add up.

We also need to see any bumps in the road as learning experiences rather than failures. In that way you are also cultivating self-love.

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.

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.

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 they’re really are not 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  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.

What better way to invest in any relationship than to invest in ourselves first. Think of self-love and all those small daily practices 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?

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.

My Book.

Did you know I talk about basic self-care, self-acceptance, self-forgiveness and gratitude in my workbooks? The steps in my workbooks will help you lay the foundations to rebuilding your life, feel more in control and help you build healthy routines. You can purchase them on Amazon or here.