Everyone always says to love yourself more but what does that really mean? When people tell you that you can’t be loved by others until you learn to love yourself, that can be hurtful and damaging. Loving yourself does not make others love you. There is no actual advice on how to really learn to love yourself more.
How Can You Love Yourself More?
You have to learn to do actions in order to show yourself love. When you are carrying out actions that your heart wants to achieve, then you are working toward self-love.
If you are telling yourself that you love you, but you are an addict or a workaholic, chances are you are not loving yourself. When you are eating unhealthily and you are choosing actions that are making you worse than you are, then you are not showing love thorough your actions.
Imagine having a child that you have to take care of and that you are responsible to do. What would you do to care for them and to love them? How would you protect them from things in this world? What things would happen that would make this child feel bad and feel neglected or uncared for?
You need to understand this and realize that you have an inner child called your heart. The more love you show it the more alive you will feel and the more energy you will have. When you ignore and neglect your inner child, you will have low self-esteem. When you know that loving yourself comes to the actions you take, what can you do to make yourself feel loved?
Ways to Love Yourself More
When you allow different your actions to show that you love yourself, you will see that you can begin to love yourself more and more.
Move
Allow yourself to become more energetic. Don’t sit around the couch all day watching television or spend the day sitting and playing on the computer. Move around because moving allows you to change the shift of your energies and will help you to feel better.
When you are always sitting around, you will make your body to become stuck with energy and this can cause you to be anxious and sad. So, instead of sitting all day, take a few moments and move as often as you can.
When you get up for work, try to get up early so you can take a few minutes to walk or join the gym. Find movement that is fun for you.
Healthy Eating
Don’t fill your body with unhealthy food and junk food. When you eat like this, you are causing your body to be sluggish and slow. Don’t make food the only thing in life that you enjoy. Find foods that are healthy such as veggies, seeds, fruits, nuts and other great foods and stop eating so many processed foods.
Your Mind
When your body feels bad and in a bad mood, you might be feeding your mind the wrong types of things.
News
The news can be depressing and most of the news is fear based. Stop putting this stuff in your mind and find other things to watch that will help you to learn something or something positive.
Reality TV
Stop watching shows that make you judge people secretly inside of you. Don’t let yourself feel better than others.
Social Media
Stop looking at negative social media and unfriend people that are only putting negative information out. This can consume you and be unhealthy to your mind.
Sleep
Don’t miss out on sleeping. You need to get at least 8 hours of sleep. Get blackout curtains or whatever you need to do to help you sleep better.
Stop being on electronics up to two hours before bed so you can calm your mind before you go to sleep. When the lights go out, cuddle with your love or have sex but stay off the electronics.
Time
Know what you are doing and where you are putting your time. Take time for things you care about. Say no to people when they ask you to do more than you have time to do. Take time to have fun and to play.
The more you care for your inner child, the more you will feel loved.
Rest
When you are working hard, you need to have time to relax. Take naps when you are tired and take long, hot baths. Use Epsom salts when you feel the mood and learn to let your soul breathe. Take a break when you need it.
Fun
Learn to have fun. One of the hardest things to do is to put fun in our schedule. Take time to play and love life. Take a class that you love or take dance lessons. Go skating or go to the park. Prioritize time to play.
List
Make a list so that you can recognize where you are being negative. If you are having a hard time keeping up, or not doing enough, write this down.
You can learn to accomplish more when you take action to organize what is going on in your life.
Have a place where you take time each day to recognize what is going on in your life and write it down, no matter how big or small.
Keep your list ongoing and write down things you accomplished as well as things you can do better. When you look back, you will see how much progress you made.
Make a list that does not make you afraid or intimidate you. Always work towards your goals.
Alone Time
If you are single or if you are in a relationship, one of the best ways you can show love to yourself is by spending time by yourself.
Everyone needs some type of alone time so go out to eat by yourself or go to a movie by yourself. Mediate each day and take time alone that makes you feel better about yourself. Just allow yourself to talk and listen to what you are saying.
Forgiveness
One problem with loving ourselves is that we have not taken time to really forgive our mistakes.
Maybe we feel bad about how we treated others or how we took advantage of someone. When you are tired or frustrated, it can cause you to be hateful and rude to others.
If you have these feelings coming to your mind, chances are you have not forgiven yourself in order to love yourself. Take time to rite out things that you feel bad about. Write what really happened and what was going on in your life at the time. Then at the end of it, say, “I completely forgive myself.”
Depending on what you are forgiving yourself for will sometimes take more time. Keep doing it and working towards self-forgiveness.
Relationships
Spend time around people that you love and invest your time into being kind to others and to loving other people. Let your relationships be strong and caring.
Love the people close to you and you will begin to see that you love yourself too.
Treat the people that you love with kindness and see that when you are intentional with them such as spending time with them that you will learn to put love in all of the right places. Having core values of love towards these people will help you to honor your actions and to love yourself even more.
Conclusion
Start with the easiest things on the list to do for yourself and then more to more challenging things. No matter where you are in your journey, you will grow stronger and learn to love yourself more and more.
Start with one thing and focus on that and when you feel that you have completed it, move to the next thing and keep adding another until you are where you want to be.
You will reach your journey of self-love in our life.