Episode 102 – 5 ways to develop self-love

Hello loves,

Today I want to talk with you about five ways to develop self love and why you need to.

So first of all, I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to imagine that you have to spend the next few decades stuck in a relationship that you cannot escape from. You have to go everywhere together, do everything together and experience every single emotion from joy through to pain together.

Would you rather this be someone that you love? Someone who also loves you? Or would you rather it be the just about able to put up with them person you have nothing else to deal with anymore. But you have to be stuck putting up with them forever.

Now here’s the twist.

This person is you. Imagine that. Every day you have to spend with you for the rest of your life. You can either put up with yourself or you could be kind and gentle with yourself.

If given the choice, which would you rather be in? A relationship where you dismiss yourself minimise yourself and mean to yourself, get irritated with yourself, sabotaging all of your hopes and dreams? Or would you rather be in one where you cultivate self love? Every day you are kind, gentle and you work towards your hopes and your dreams and you go to bed every night knowing that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, you love you.

So if the second option is your preferred option, here are five ways that you can begin that journey.

1. Give yourself permission to feel.

Emotions and neither good nor bad. They are just natural reactions that we can have to any situation. And it’s what our primal brain uses to determine danger, desire, need, injustice. If we label emotions as bad we pile on shame and guilt and frustration. simply for being ourselves for being human. But if we allow and appreciate our emotions, we would have greater self awareness and self compassion. So the next time that you feel angry, sad, desperate or anxious don’t just try to create a ‘positive vibes only”, which they often call toxic positivity, environments. Instead, ask yourself what could this emotion be telling you about your current situation?

I spent sooo much of last year and the year before, and probably quite a bit longer than that, ridiculously angry. Only to discover through grief counselling these last few months that that was actually resentment. Anger is a good emotion. It tells us that something is wrong it’s then for us to break down further what that anger could be telling us. And when you do have more of a clue behind what your emotion could be, you have more choice to be able to take the next step that you want to take so if you are angry you don’t lash out. It enables you to take the time for yourself to approach the situation with grace and compassion for yourself and for others.

2. Forgive yourself and be patient.

This is something I have really had to work on the last few months. When we give ourselves the chance to explore new things to go for new hopes or dreams we risk failure. We risk making mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes can be massive. Relationships can fail, we can lose money, our health can decline. And then the shame and guilt that follows can really hurt and there’s a good reason for that.

We are social creatures and we have a very strong moral compass. And the self conscious emotions hold us accountable and the self conscious emotions hold us accountable to others as well as ourselves. And they are not helpful when you ruminate on them and if you allow yourself to sink into them, it can just build on self-hatred.

So how do you forgive yourself?

First, take full responsibility for whatever your role was in what happened and let go of the parts that have nothing to do with you. They were not your responsibility and you must be realistic about this. It’s so easy to be compassionate about the other person and make excuses for them. But if it’s not your responsibility, you do not need to take accountability for it.

Perhaps you were already feeling so low that you responded in a way that you would never normally respond in. And it’s not about making excuses. It’s about making an honest acknowledgement that will help you to understand what happened so you can begin to make things right. And as for the patience with yourself, something I’m definitely having to work on, it takes time to forgive someone else. And it takes time to forgive yourself to showing yourself compassion, taking action to make the amends and to apologise, and to not punish yourself because you really don’t need any more reminders as to what went wrong.

3. Express yourself.

Even if you are not a creative person artistically, there will still be creative aspects about your personality. We are all creative. We just need to find the way to express ourselves. For me that is making my own clothes or painting or baking. Perhaps for you it’s been able to play musical instrument. Maybe it’s dancing. Maybe it’s writing. Maybe you are a brilliant comedian and all your friends crack up at all of your jokes. Or maybe your creative flair lies in connecting people, throwing a dinner party and bringing together the best bunch of people you know and everyone has an amazing time.

One of the greatest ways you can love yourself is to dig in to something you care about and let your creative juices flow.

4. Listen to your body.

For those of us with a chronic illness, this is super important. We have learned the hard way that our bodies are our most valuable asset and so often we end up pushing them so hard, as hard as they will go. I know I have definitely done this far too many times in the past. But what would happen if you paid more attention to your body’s needs? If you really listened to it? Would you rest during your busy days? Would you take the opportunity to have better quality sleep at night? Would you eat more nourishing food? Would you spend more time in nature? Would you give your body exactly what it needs?

And lastly, 5. Set boundaries.

When it comes to self-love, it means self-value. And when you value someone, you respect them and you don’t take advantage of them. We are so good at valuing others and we really let ourselves down

We would never think of dumping our work onto somebody else just because we want to leave early. We would push a friend to ask for the pay rise that they truly deserve. But we rarely do this for ourselves. We wouldn’t say no if another colleague dumped their work on to us as well. We have such a hard time saying no and to the standing up to us. We have such a hard time saying no and standing up to ourselves. And when we do this what are we telling ourselves? That we don’t deserve respect to not just from others but for ourselves? How can you love and treasure yourself if you don’t respect yourself? I know it’s really really tough. But you have to set those boundaries it’s not about saying no to other people. It’s about saying yes to yourself.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope you found this useful and I hope you can use at least one of these to start giving yourself a little bit more self-love.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Life in Align podcast. If you liked what you heard please subscribe and share, so that we can get this out to others who are also wanting to take back the life a chronic illness stole from them.

And remember – you are worth it, and you get to choose.

Have a lovely day.