When is the last time that you took a look at yourself and felt great, felt really happy with what you saw and felt, you had no self judgments? Love for yourself if the key to feeling fully alive and being able to fully love others.
For the most part many don’t think about self-love, you just go about your days. You may criticize what you see in the mirror or think criticizing negative thoughts about your self and then never think about the repercussions of having those thoughts. None of us think or recognize the damage it does to our spirit and to our feelings of self-fulfillment and love. Criticizing your physical being as you walk by a mirror is a habit, having negative criticizing thoughts about yourself is a habit and you have become so programmed to doing it that you may not recognize that you are doing it.
The worst part of these habits is while you are saying these things to yourself day and day out, you tear yourself down bit by bit and it makes room for others to do the same to you, you are accepting of it.
It is time to stop being so hard on yourself, things will never improve until you feel the love inside of you, until you give yourself the loving thoughts that you deserve. You will never have a different outcome when you have judgmental thoughts towards yourself and others, that is who you are and what you attract. You will not see anything positive or self-loving till you actually start practicing positive loving thoughts to yourself and others. Negativity and criticizing yourself and others will block your mojo.
Our thoughts are our things, thoughts create our words, words create our actions, actions become our life. Our thoughts are based on our past experiences so to build new experiences or new ways of thinking about yourself you need to look at what you want for yourself and look at where your attention goes.
Feeling love for yourself is initially a practice; it is something that you have to make sure you make time for every day. One of the best things about feeling love for your self is it has nothing to do with anybody else, it has nothing to do with what anybody else thinks about you and it has nothing to do with your physical being or your circumstances. Creating a self-love routine to have self-love from the inside out is only about you and one of the most rewarding practices that you can do for yourself.
I would like to challenge everyone to take on a self-love routine every day for at least 30 days. If you have a family, it would be great to get your kids and partners to practice self love, what a great gift to teach them how to do this.
What exactly is self-love: being connected with yourself, loving, respecting, trusting and honoring yourself, it is being kind to yourself. Self-love is enjoying your own presence.
Here are some steps to start you on your path to finding self-love, set aside time everyday to practice these steps. Know that the more you practice several of these items on a daily basis the faster you will see and feel the shift within you;
- Look in the mirror everyday, don’t look at your physical image, look into your eyes, pause a few seconds and then say something kind, ONLY ever say kind words. For example; I love you and you are amazing, I appreciate you. If negative judgmental words show up, tell them to stop, not now
- Write at least 5 things that you are grateful for, for being you. When you do this you look for the good, it is a shift. For example – I am grateful for having this awesome body to carry me around. I am grateful for my eyes. I am grateful for….. Start somewhere and find 5 new things everyday. We all have a lot to be grateful for!
- Give compliments to yourself and to others everyday, this will help raise your vibration. For example – I look beautiful today, you look awesome today. Start off with giving at least one compliment to yourself, to every family member and to your work colleagues everyday and then give as many as you can.
- Silence for 15 minutes every day. You can call this whatever you want, meditation, silence, me time. This exercise is really important. Our thoughts are like a very busy street intersection. They never stop and are coming at you in many different directions at many different speeds. In order for you to see things that we can not see you need to clear your thoughts, you need to stop thinking and have moments of silence to allow your inner voice to be heard. At first you may find the thoughts don’t stop and have the urge to give this up. I personally experienced this, constant thoughts. After a bit, I noticed that I was having 2 minutes with no thoughts and then the times got longer and longer. At first I noticed a sense of peace that I got from this practice and feeling and knowing that everything would be ok. This is so important. We have to find ways to hear and feel our inner voice, it has important messages for you.
- Schedule in something fun that you love to do at least once a week no matter how busy or stressed you are. It is really important to bring some fun back into your life so you can feel that inner aliveness and excitement, it is something to look forward to.
- Pause – when life gets crazy pause for just 5 or 10 minutes. Like a time out, stop thinking, breath deeply, stretch for as long as you can. Then regroup and go back to what you have to do. This can be done anywhere when you are feeling stressed out or just need a minute.
- Stop all negative, condemning conversations to yourself and about others. These conversations and thoughts will ALWAYS bring you down, they tear away at your spirit. There is nothing good about being negative to and about yourself and others .
Life is too short to always be pushing away what makes you feel good. We get into the habit of pushing our wants and needs away not realizing that it does take away from our personal fulfillment and happiness, it tears down our spirit piece by piece.
At the end of the 30 days, don’t stop, I know you will love it so much that it will just become part of your regular routine. Start this practice today, don’t wait till tomorrow, that maybe a habit to push away, I promise you when you practice this everyday you will notice shifts of peace and happiness with in yourself. If you have a habit of quitting what is important to you, get an accountability partner and ask them to check in with you everyday to remind you of why this is so important.
Self-Love is your ultimate happiness place. When your relationship with yourself is based on love, everything else changes for the better.
It is important to Love YOUR Life to be happy — if you don’t love your life, do something about it!
Susan Delano Swim is a Certified High Performance Coach, her goal is to help you reach heightened levels of clarity, energy, courage, productivity and influence on your march to a successful, healthy and fully charged life. For a complimentary one hour coaching session fill in the application here