A reminder I believe we all need is that it is okay to love ourselves. Life can get away from us at times, but by building healthy habits like the ones listed here you can begin to practice self-love every day!

1. Keep a Journal

Journaling is a great way to de-stress and put down all of the thoughts that are swirling in your head. Journaling is also helpful with tracking thought patterns, and highlighting if your inner dialogue is one that is caring or overly critical.

2. Focus on POSITIVE Speech

The way we speak reveals a lot about our mindset, even when we are not even aware that it does. Focus on using positive speech and phrases to create a loving outlook on your life. Up against a challenge? Don’t get caught up in how things went wrong, instead focus on finding solutions.

Examples:
Focus on saying phrases like “I like that I am….”, “I’m happy with…, and “This may not have gone as planned, but here are ways to get back on track…”
Try to limit any negative phrases like “This isn’t what I wanted”, “I can’t do anything about that,” and “I would be happier if I had ____.”

Join the Newsletter!

Subscribe to stay up-to-date on our latest content and freebies!

3. Schedule “ME” Time

Taking time for yourself during the day, night, or weekends will actually improve your focus and happiness in life and yourself. In the same way that you schedule time for family, friends, coworkers and meetings, also set aside time for yourself.

And I don’t mean time to just turn off your mind while browsing the internet or watching random videos on Youtube, but actually taking time to focus on you and your interests. Read a book, learn something new, take yourself to dinner, or anything else that let’s you sit in the awareness that you are caring for YOU.

Recommended: When Being Considerate is a Bad Thing

4. Treat Yo’Self

If you haven’t seen Parks & Recreation (which I highly recommend if not!), this may be a new term to you. The purpose of TYS is to take a day to focus on what YOU want, and be a Yes Man for yourself. Don’t be afraid to invest time and energy into yourself. Your wellbeing should always be a priority.

5. Create Your Own Positive Affirmations

Positive Affirmations are a great tool to focus your life in the direction you want to go by actively defining what you truly want. There are many affirmations out there you can choose from, but you can also choose to come up with one of your own. This way the affirmation is fully personalized, and creating one will provide more time for you to reflect on yourself and what you truly want.

Please note that HOW the affirmation is worded is equally important! If you are new to affirmations, be sure to reference other existing ones to double check the effectiveness of your wording. Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.

6. Become a Better Listener

Listening isn’t just to others, but also to your Self — Mind, Body and Spirit.

All aspects of the Self are connected and when one area is out of balance, it can be linked to issues in another. By building an awareness of your Self and maintaining good listening you give yourself the respect you deserve and are better able to refocus your life in the way you would be most fulfilled.

7. Meditation & Quiet Time

Whether you take time to reflect while in the shower or purposely set aside time to sit in a quiet room with only your thoughts, meditation is a great tool to slow down for a moment and just Be. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to ways to meditate, so choose the method that works best for you!

8. Unplug from Social Media

There are few places we are able to go now that electronics cannot follow and we’re never really off when the internet and social media are 24/7. Being tied to the rest of the world is a blessing, but always being available takes a toll on our personal wellbeing.

Actively choose to shut down and turn off your devices to get a break. Relegate time to check for updates and respond to messages if you can’t walk away completely, but then Put. It. Down.

9. Embrace the Present

The only moment we have is now, but I know it’s hard to live in the present when 1) everyone’s posting throwback pics on Instagram, sharing memories on Facebook, or all the other things that tug on our own nostalgia; or 2) our jobs keep us busy and overworked, worrying about the next fire we need to put out sometime soon.

Practice self-love by bringing your thoughts back to your current moment. A way you can better live in the present is through the language you choose. Use tenses which encourage manifestation of the things you want in the present. Think “I am”, not “I want to be”. Or “I will do…”, versus “I wish I could…”

10. Maintain an Open Mind

Being open is a prerequisite to growth and allows you to try new things, process differing viewpoints, and reassess beliefs you have internalized that may be harming you. Your reality starts from within, so choose to minimize the walls and barriers you place in your mind in order to interact more fully with the world — and in the process show more love for yourself than ever before.

11. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses isn’t just for job interviews! Knowing the qualities we possess make us more aware of how they affect our daily lives. Keep in mind, identifying weaknesses isn’t so you can critique and point out your flaws. It is the starting point to understanding where those weaknesses come from. It is only by loving ourselves and accepting our faults, that we are able to grow past them.

12. Nurture Your Passions & Hobbies

When we live for others or our jobs, our focus and thus our growth begins to stay only within these areas.

You are more than what you do for others though, so why limit your growth based on what others require? Expand yourself not based on what others need from you, but what sparks your own interest.

13. Trust Your Intuition

Our intuition is meant to lead us in the best direction for us, but many discredit that internal voice or “gut feeling” and rather go with what they are able to intellectualize. Society greatly values logic and reason when making decisions, but some of our greatest minds credit their success to listening to their intuition, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla. The next time you get a strong feeling about a decision to be made, take a moment to consider it.

14. Acknowledge Your Emotions

Bottling emotions and repressing them can be detrimental to our personal development. There are good ways and spaces to express our emotions, and definitely take advantage of your personal time and space in order to do so.

Let yourself FEEL your emotions. The good, the “bad”*, and the beautiful. Don’t push them aside. Allowing yourself to process your emotional responses is one of the greatest ways to practice self love, and to better understand who we are as individuals.

*NOTE: There may be “bad” or harmful ways to express an emotion, but emotion itself is not bad. It is from believing emotions are bad that leads people to invalidation and repression of their Self that can manifest negatively.

15. Breathe Deeply

Breathing deeply helps to bring awareness to your Self, and is highly underrated. It’s easy to do anywhere and is a great reminder to know that you are alive! Scientific research boasts health benefits for deep breathing as well. Breathe in, breathe out, and let live!

16. Understand Your Love Language

There are different ways we express ourselves, and the way we choose to express affection and want it in return is no exception.

Learn to understand what it is you want, and start treating yourself in the way you want to be treated. Receiving love from others does not replace the love we give ourselves. If anything, it is only by loving ourselves that we are then able to accept love from others.

17. Practice Self-love Through Forgiveness

Forgiveness is always for yourself. When we don’t forgive, resentment can grow within ourselves and weigh us down, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Letting that anger and hurt go is not about pushing it away or forgetting, but instead taking it off of your own shoulders.

When you are upset with yourself recognize that your downfalls are apart of your growth. Forgiving yourself can be the hardest to do, but it is also the best way to love yourself.

18. Grow Your Sense of Humor

This can be especially helpful for those who feel the need to be in control. A sense of humor helps to improve tolerance. Things cannot hold you down or throw you off your groove if you learn to laugh at it. Look on the bright side, don’t take things to seriously, and let the small stuff slide.

19. Declutter/Organize Your Space

A cluttered space leads to a cluttered mind. To promote clearer thoughts you can organize your bedroom, office, desk, car, etc. Focus on the areas you spend the most time in first and notice any changes in how you feel!

20. Go Outside & Get Sunlight

Especially if you work in an office and spend most of your time indoors, going outside can be a breath of fresh air (….I’ll let myself out for that one). But seriously, getting out on breaks during the day, or spending weekends outside helps to clear the mind and do a body good. Sunlight helps to give you a dose of Vitamin D, too, which helps boost your energy and happiness levels.

21. Nurture Healthy Relationships

We tend to reflect the qualities of those we surround ourselves with and setting standards for your relationships with others affects the one you hold with yourself. Choose relationships with people who have the qualities you want to possess and can bring positivity into your life.

22. Speak Your Truth

In order to love ourselves, we need to embrace our beliefs and values. Mind you, not those that we were given by others and follow blindly, but those values which we have cultivated from thought and consideration. The world has made it a harder place to be open with our ideas without them being attacked, but there’s a way to still live by your truth, even if not speaking outright in areas that it would put you in danger.*

*A note here though, if your truth specifically calls to alienate or hurt another, that’s not a real truth. Go back to the drawing board and try again, making sure you keep love, tolerance, and an open mind present in your thought process.

Join the Newsletter!

Subscribe to stay up-to-date on our latest content and freebies!

23. Respect the Perspectives of Others

Impressions, expectations, and judgment. It’s hard to avoid these from others or even ourselves, but it can be very freeing when we stop spending so much of our time on these things. When we no longer focus on judgment from others, or us doing it to another, we free up so much additional time to focus elsewhere on our life.

Think about it, if we spent as much time loving and growing ourselves as we’ve spent judging everything I bet the world would be a different place, and more people would be closer to being their higher selves. When you practice self-love you are also practicing your love for others.

24. Celebrate What Makes You Different

There’s a reason why we don’t all look the same, think the same, or follow the same interests. We aren’t here to all be the same so we need to stop comparing ourselves to others.

What makes us different is also what makes us capable of helping others, and ourselves, in ways no one else can. Embrace yourself! Choose that who you are is awesome and see how your new perspective changes the world around you for the better.

25. Let Go of Control and Have Faith

We’re not meant to know it all. We’re not meant to control everything. All we can truly control is our mindset and our reaction to what happens in our lives. Whether you are religious or not, having faith is a way to let go of the control over the unknown. Focus on trusting the choices you make and the path it creates, and watch it unfold in front of you.

Read More Like This:

Negativity & Language: How Your Words Are Creating Your Life Sentence

How To Let Go Based On Your Sensory Learning Style

How Bottling Emotions Affects Your Memory

When Being Considerate is a Bad Thing

Learning to Accept Change in Myself & Others

Grow Your Intuition & Become More Intuitive

Self-Acceptance: Seeing the Strength in Your Flaws