How to start loving yourself March 3, 2016 – Posted in: Advice, Confidence, Personal Development – Tags: love

If you read Tuesday’s post about the benefits of self-love, you’ll know that I promised to start giving you tips on how you might start the life-long process of learning to be good to yourself today.

I’ll be exploring this topic in depth throughout March, and today we’ll make a start together…

The first step in being a bit nicer to yourself is to make the decision that it’s something you’d like to try. It’s one thing to say, “Oh yes, one must be good to oneself”, but another thing entirely to commit to doing so.

If self love is something you want to have, then you have to practice. Make the decision official and write it down somewhere. Don’t underestimate the power of writing down your intentions.

Now, for the practice part. Don’t worry – you have your whole life to get good at this. We’re going for progress not perfection here.

Consider your ‘self’ like you would a small child. You’re the adult in charge of that child. What does he or she need?

Encouragement?
Love?
Good food?
Exercise?
A warm, safe home?
Learning opportunities?
Friendships?
Kind words?
The freedom to make mistakes?
Variety?
Routine?

Add your own items to this list. Really go to town. What do you need in order to feel loved?

Once you have your master list, start writing next to each point how you might give these things to yourself (as the adult in your own life) in small ways. You might think that you can’t give things such as ‘encouragement’ and ‘kind words’ to yourself, but you can – you really can – by speaking kindly to yourself internally. We’ll look at this in more detail in my next post.

Keep it small for now but be creative and have fun with this.

Oh, and let me know how you get on!