Love Yourself In 4 Simple Steps

Love and caring for yourself can be one of the most difficult tasks, especially if you are surrounded by negative people or those who only put you down. You are unable to see the good side. Sometimes you might not even believe in yourself or that you have a good side, which only makes the negative thoughts stronger.

The tips discussed in this article will help put you on the right track to loving yourself. It will also help get rid of those negative voices in your head to replace them with more positive ones. Follow these 4 simple steps to start out your journey to loving and caring for yourself! Let’s make this journey a life-long self loving one.

Step 1: Self Care

Self-care is an important first step to take, partially because it is one of the easiest.

If you feel down about yourself, you might not feel like you should take part in a lot of self-care. But doing even a very small thing can count as self-care to the point that you may not even feel like you are doing anything different! Self care is good for the soul and good for your self love.

Some subtle examples of self care include:

• Having a warm bath with salts and bubbles.
• Watching a short funny video.
• Talking or being with your friends.
• Going for a walk in the park.

These activities can give you a little bit of a boost to help you get through your day or to help you unwind at the end of it. They can clear your head, help put you in a slightly better frame of mind, and let you move forward without beating yourself up over what you aren’t doing or what you are doing wrong.

Choose an activity that helps calm your inner self or brings you the most happiness. Then start using that as a self-care tool! Doing one of these small activities a day or at least once a week can help brighten it up and let you start feeling better little by little. Write down your top 5 self care routines that you can include each day, even for 5 minutes, to make self care a daily habit that leads to self love.

Step 2: Mental Breaks

This is the part where letting yourself get out of your head for a bit and really be calm and it is vital to helping you feel better about yourself.

We all do it, we allow negative thoughts to take over. According to research statistics, as many as 98 percent of our thoughts each day are exactly the same as we had the day before. What’s even scarier is that 80 percent of our thoughts are negative.

This is why calming the mind, taking mental breaks and practicing self care leads to a beautiful path of self love. Instead of letting your mind be crowded with negative thought processes about yourself or your world around you, it’s important to release and quiet the mind to the best of your ability.

Here are a few ways you can accomplish this:

• Watch the clouds go by for a few minutes
• Lay on the grass and meditate
• Read a good, happy or inspirational book
• Close your eyes and listen to your favorite song in between work
• Meditate for 10 minutes at a time

These kinds of mind calming activities help to calm your mind and give you a fresh reset to your day, no matter when you do these activities!

After giving yourself this mental break, reflect on the positive things you have done so far that day. Maybe you wrote a journal entry, cooked dinner, or got a compliment on your work or appearance – any type of accomplishment can help bring your positivity levels up and contribute to feeling better about yourself. This process alone will pick up your mood and increase your self love each and every day.

Step 3: Daily Activities

Your physical health is also incredibly important in helping you to make progress into feeling better about yourself.

When your body feels good, you feel good. This is because eating well, exercising and resting well increases your happiness. Caring for yourself physically – making sure you are eating and sleeping well, at the very least – can have a huge impact on how you feel about yourself.

A few ways to include some self love activity can be:

• Going for a 10 to 15 – minute walk or run by some water
• Stretch or do yoga for 10 – 30 minutes a day
• Take a nap (yes this counts!)
• Get some sun for 15 – 20 minutes a day
• Practice deep breathing to move the oxygen

These are just some very basic springboards for you to get started. The key is just moving. Movement is one way to get your energy flowing and could even help you get through the day on a much more positive note.

Physical action rewards you with positive thoughts and vice versa. It’s a beautiful cycle that continues the more active you are. It may take a long period of time to fully be rid of any negative thoughts in your head about yourself, but this is a great way to build up a beautiful habit. What activity can you do today?

Step 4: Self Affirmations

The final and most important step to loving yourself is talking to yourself with love and kindness. Affirmations help train your brain to think more positively about yourself. Affirmations are simply quick, small statements you can say out loud, silently or write down. You could even make a list of positive things you have accomplished recently!

For example, you can use the following phrases or thoughts:

• Think I am wonderful, I am kind, I am amazing
• I am a beautiful person inside out
• I went to the gym 3 times this week. This is way better than last month when I didn’t go at all.

These statements help put your life into perspective. Everything is an accomplishment. You managed to do something that you may not have normally wanted to do. Even if you have the goal of doing something every day like exercise or eating well, think of how many times you have done those things. Focus on that!

Affirmations help solidify your own personal worth because they create a positive mindset and motivate you to do better. It also will help you see what you have accomplished, even if it isn’t everything you wanted to get done.

Write down 5 affirmations you can practice saying to yourself this week. Write them down, print them out, keep them visible. Say them to yourself when you brush your teeth, you make a cup of tea or when you go to the bathroom. Just make it a habit and you’ll be loving yourself more in no time.

To Love Yourself Means To Live

Start with a simple self care routine and you’ll love yourself in no time!

Let’s recap:

One: Practice Self Care
Two: Take meaningful mental breaks in your day
Three: Do a little more daily activity that you LOVE
Four: Say you love yourself with affirmations

These are the four simple steps you should try to engage in each day for maximum impact. Loving yourself is a long and difficult journey. Hopefully these tips will help you start getting better. It should also help give you a framework to what you should do when you are feeling down on yourself.