A million "likes" will never be enough if we don't like ourselves

I’m a great believer that feeling great about ourselves is an inside job. This is not something I always known, instead it’s something I have had to learn and something that I still need to remind myself to practice daily

Without loving ourselves I learnt that we easy become bottomless pits that are moving through life in constant chase for the feeling of feeling good enough, loved enough, successful enough, happy enough and so on but unable to ever really feel well…. just enough

Despite the fact that likes, love and approval seems to flow to us not only easily but instantaneously today through various external sources such as social media, friends, partners, jobs and through various achievements and despite the fact that it all for a moment or two may make us feel amazing, happy and a bit awesome, I today know and believe that external “love” will NEVER be enough unless we ACTUALLY genuinely like/love ourselves

“Feeling LOVED and ENOUGH simply comes from the inside out not the other way around”

Self-love which I believe consists of self-acceptance, the ability to hold a kind and loving self-image (physically and mentally) and an empathetic, gentle heart towards ourselves and others comes from the practice of embracing all that we are. It is about being kind and forgiving of our mistakes, loving and accepting of our flaws and the ability to be able to hold a firm belief that we can do absolutely anything we put our mind to. I believe that self-love is about being our own greatest follower in all ways, always!

However, to feel this way about ourselves is not a simple task. I leant that it takes both time and effort and it is something we may always need to remind ourselves of from time to time. As oppose to a quick solution, I believe self-love is instead an ongoing practice that we need to incorporate and include into our lives and into our everyday for us to be able to reap the true benefits.

So, how can you start practice self-love? Below you will find 2 practices that I myself found invaluable in shifting my own mindset.

Gratitude: I am sure you heard it before. The greater gratitude we have towards ourselves and all the things that we already have in our lives the greater happiness we will feel.

While there is no doubt that gratitude plays a major role in our lives and to our happiness few of us may have a daily gratitude practice where we allocate some time to reflect of all the things that we currently have that we can be grateful for. Instead we might wake up to other people’s seemingly #pictureperefect lives on social media and feel depleted, jealous and sad that our own life or we don’t seem to be able to measure up.

When it comes to gratitude what I learnt is that if we instead started our day by reflecting over all the great things that we actually do have in our lives we will most likely not only feel happier about ourselves and our own lives but also about how great our friends, family and complete stranger are having. I learnt and believe that when we feel great about ourselves we will also feel great about other people and their success and happiness which is not only a healthy way to view life but also a deeply satisfying one.

On a side note when it comes to jealousy, I just wanted to point out that to feel a sting of jealously, envy over something that we currently don’t have is not always a bad thing instead it could be a great sign that we might want the same for ourselves which if seen this way is a helpful and productive way to realign our goals and efforts.

How to get started with Gratitude: Allocate some time, it could just be 5 min every morning to reflect over all the things you have and been blessed with in your lives.

You don’t have to write them down, but absolutely can if you want

In the beginning it might feel a bit weird but stay with it and it will come naturally the more you do it. Keep it simple. One day your gratefulness list might just consist of two things i.e. I am grateful for my Cat Arnie and my bed. There is no right or wrong but for it to work it needs to be something that we are genuinely grateful for. I started to list the things I am grateful for a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes before bed time. My bed time grateful list usually consist of thing that happened in my day that which made me happy or that I appreciated.

Being kind and loving to self: For obvious reason this is a big one when it comes to self-love and you might like me find it to be pretty difficult in the beginning. Most of us have for far too many years indulged in negative self-talk where we put ourselves down, made ourselves felt less than, “not good enough” etc so the task here is to really start to change that internal critical voice to a more kind, self-loving and accepting supportive voice. This will take time so be patient with yourself and show yourself mountains of compassion, empathy, love and kindness.

I, myself lived most of my life with a super strong inner critic and it took me years to change the voice inside my head that told me that I was completely and utterly useless, unlovable, and horrible and though I 100% doubted it then I today know that it is possible to change that voice.

How to get started with being kind and loving towards ourselves:

I found the first step to be to become aware of my own negative self-talk by observing and noting down my negative internal dialogue within a 48 hour window. After reviewing it it became clear to me why I was feeling so shit all the time. This things I told myself was not only negative, they were self-limiting, straight out evil and self-harming. To change it however was difficult as it all appeared to be on auto pilot where I had little or no control over what and when my internal critic would lash out and attack me. So, my second step was to bring awareness to the situations, events and circumstances my negative self-talk became particular loud and harmful so that I could prepare myself to stop it in its track.

My stop tactics was initially to talk back to my internal negative voice by telling to shut up, or that I’m refusing to listening to it. It might seem silly and to be honest it really felt incredibly silly the first times, however after reflecting on it as a matter of fact me talking back to it trying to stop it was probably less silly and more sensible that continuing putting myself down and harming myself, my confidence and sense of self. So, if you choose to give this tactic a go be prepared to feel a bit silly initially but trust me it will subside and the benefits are far greater that the internal awkwardness.

My third step was to start to incorporate self-love into my life on a daily basis by being kind and loving to myself in the following ways:

1. Self-acceptance and appreciation: This could include compliments and appreciation of my skills, strengths as well as appearance. Instead of focusing on what I was lacking, why I wasn’t good enough I slowly started to shift my focus to try to find this that I did do well and that I did like about myself and put my effort on highlighting them. I today know that we all have strengths and beauty (physical and mental) and the power lies in shifting our focus on to what we have instead on what we don’t have. While no one is perfect we all got something.

On a daily basis take a look in the mirror and highlight a strength (a skill, character trait or a physical feature) that you love/like about yourself.

2. Self-Care: We are not going to feel absolutely fabulous every day and that is just the reality of life so instead of staying stuck in feeling sorry for ourselves, sad and depleted I started to ask myself, what can I do for myself today to take care of myself and to feel the best that I can. I just want to point out that this does not mean that we need to make ourselves happy when we are sad but instead be kind and compassionate to ourselves that we are feeling down and remind ourselves that that is absolutely ok. I believe that self-care is also the ability to stay with our feeling, the good, bad and ugly and allow ourselves to feel then. I’m a great believer that healing lies in the process of feeling our feelings without attempting to distract ourselves from the feeling of uncomfortableness.

3. Self-belief: Another big part of self-love in my opinion is the ability to be our very own greatest supporter, to believe in ourselves, what we are, what we want to be and have the potential to become. I learnt that most of the time we are our own greatest enemy by giving up on ourselves before we even gotten started, to let failures and falls keep us down and by doubting ourselves in every step of the way. I learnt and noticed through my own experience that our self-doubts at times increases with age. As children we are all natural explorers, we are born to try, fall, fail and try again however as adults we tend to let failure, fear and rejection cripple us.

For many years I thought that my failures, rejections and flaws was my truth, I let them define and instead of being my own biggest supporter I jump across to the enemy side and pitched in on the negative and hurtful comments and let it guide, rule and dictate my life. That was until I realised that in the end of the day NO ONE is going to believe in me unless I do. For me to not only succeed but to be able to continue to move forward despite failures, rejections and fucking fear was that I got my own back. The key was for me to start to believe in myself and NOT let my circumstances or past define me. I learnt through life that not everyone is going to love or even like us and there is not anyone that are able to support us 100% so it is really our task to claim that job right back.

Again this did not just happen overnight instead it was through the process of noticing every time when I was my own worst enemy and instead of abandoning myself I started to training myself to be kind, compassionate and loving to myself and last but not least learning to pep talk myself back up for all my falls, failures and rejections. I learnt that the saying is true how often we fall and fail does not matter what matters is that we get back up. It is the getting back up that defines us, it is the never giving up that keeps us going and it is our self-belief and mindset that determines our success and ultimately happiness.

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#Mindset #Selflove