How To Start Loving Yourself

Have you ever felt loved? Loved deeply and unconditionally? Strongly and dearly? That's an amazing feeling, isn't it? And it seems to be only natural for anyone to feel like that about themselves. However, unfortunately, in many cases that is not how we treat ourselves.

For some reason, we could be extremely judgmental and critical about ourselves, feel ashamed of who we are or how we look, or how much money we make, feel sad about lacking something about ourselves that we think we have to have in order to be worthy.

Loving yourself means being kind, appreciative, forgiving, and curious about yourself. It also means knowing yourself and taking care of yourself. It means being confident in your worthiness and daring to be happy. If this sounds exciting to you, continue reading to learn how to start loving yourself.

Accept Yourself

Accepting yourself means that you can dispassionately look at yourself, and take all your qualities, both positive and negative, for what they are worth and embrace them. It means allowing yourself being yourself. Not trying to change or improve anything, but accepting all variable qualities and features that you have and let them be.

Accepting yourself also means accepting all your previous experience. No guilt, not shame. It is very important.

Prioritize Yourself

Take care of your health. This includes but not limited to protect your body from physical exhaustion, don't overwork to about burnout, take breaks from work, get nutritious food, get enough sleep.

Respect yourself. Avoid toxic, abusive people. Choose people that are good for your physical and mental state.

Let yourself express emotions. Don't hide or suppress anger or sadness. The emotions you experience are valid, so let yourself expressing them. And if you are experiencing positive emotions - don't be shy to show them as well!

Stay Curious

Organize the environment in which you can look at all your anxiety and fears and work with them feeling supported and safe. Again, carefully choose people you want to have in your inner circle. If you have a good support system you have better chance to get into a habit of loving yourself quicker.

Pay attention to your how you feel and how you act in different situations, and you will start noticing if you are being judgmental or angry or dismissive of yourself. As you track this, you will be able to correct the way you think or act, which eventually will help you develop a new habit of staying attentive to yourself and listening to yourself.

You can also try to use positive affirmations looking at yourself in the mirror. This approach has showed outstanding results for people that were willing to improve their attitude to themselves and the world around them.

If you want to introduce the affirmations to learn to love yourself, you can start with reading a book called "Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay.