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Love, as we all know, is the most powerful force in the universe and certainly is a must ingredient if we want to live a happy life.
Before we can love someone else, the first step is to love ourselves, in fact Happiness is feeling good about who we are.
If we do not love ourselves, we can have problems in loving someone else or even to be loved.
According to some researches, loving ourselves also plays a vital role in obtaining our dreams and goals in life.
When it comes to love, you get what you give. Love yourself first before you can expect others to love you back.
We need to take pride in who we are and what we have because we’ve worked hard to achieve so many things in life. We may not succeed in every endeavor, but this doesn’t mean that all hope is lost.
We must learn to see ourselves as the most important person and do not let anyone make us feel less important than them. Be careful, that doesn’t mean we have to be arrogant, big head and selfish…
This is mainly to be avoided in a relationship, but not only, since it can happen in any situation of life.
Quite often in a relationship, one of the two persons is weaker and has a tendency to do everything for the other person with the result of self exclusion, just to please the partner. In this way, sometimes we could end up losing our identity, because we live according to the other person wishes.
So what can we do to love ourselves? Here are some suggestions:
First of all we need to:
-# 1 Start Believing in ourselves and have a healthy self-esteem.
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. Norman Vincent Peale
If we don’t believe in ourselves, we can’t expect other believing in us.
Now what is the self-esteem and why is bad having a low self-esteem?
Well, the word ‘esteem’ comes from a Latin word which means ‘to estimate’. So, self-esteem is how we estimate ourselves, basically it’s what we think of ourselves. None of us were born with low self-esteem. Our self-esteem has developed through the years by what we were told and how we were made to feel by the people in our lives. Experiences during our childhood play a particularly large role in the shaping of our basic self-esteem. When we were growing up, our successes (and failures) and how we were treated by the members of our immediate family, by our teachers, coaches, religious authorities, all contributed to the creation of our basic self-esteem.
Our self-esteem develops and evolves throughout our lives as we build an image of ourselves through our experiences with different people and activities.
What we don’t want to do is to base the perception of ourselves on what others think of us. This can simple be destructive.
So why self-esteem is so important?
The concept of self-esteem can also be summed up as: Confidence in our ability to think and in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life and confidence in our right to be successful and happy, the feelings of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values and enjoy the fruits of our efforts.
Living in a state of low self esteem can be very damaging to the quality of life we lead on a daily basis.
Your self esteem is YOUR opinion of yourself, but far too many people allow others to influence or even make up their opinion for them.
Have a Good Opinion of Yourself! What you think of yourself is more important of what other people think of you.
Our self-esteem contributes also to our vitality, energy level, persistence, and personal magnetism, so that’s why is very important to have a healthy self-esteem.
Self-esteem is about what is on the inside, a belief in ourselves and our abilities.
Few questions to understand the level of our self-esteem:
- Do I like myself?
- Do I deserve happiness?
- Do I think I’m a good person?
- Do I deserve to be loved?
- Do I really feel, both in my mind and deep in my guts, that I’m an OK person?
People with low self-esteem find it hard to answer ‘yes’ to these questions.
If you have answered No to some of the questions above, don’t worry because we can raise the level of our self-esteem any time we want it.
How can we raise our self-esteem?
#Utilizing positive affirmations. Positive affirmations can be a very powerful tool for transforming what a person thinks about himself and as a result improve the individual’s self-esteem. This isn’t new-age anything, it’s simply a way for us to infuse positive self-talk into our life and calm that negative inner voice. While utilized in a various ways, working with positive affirmations will be more effective when delivered through or combined with therapeutic relaxation music. What therapeutic relaxation music does to enhance the effect of positive affirmations, is to create a very relaxed audio environment for the individual to become even more open or suggestive to the language of positive affirmations.
Here is a short video to give you an idea about Positive Affirmations:
Here is a short video to give you an idea about Positive Affirmations:
If you would like to know more about “Positive Affirmations” you can download for FREE, the e-book “Self Help Affirmations”
#Practice basic self-care. Get enough sleep, eat in a healthy fashion, get regular exercise, practice good hygiene, and so forth. A healthy mind is dependent on a healthy body. Consider your body as your temple, so treat it well. Drink at least two litres of water per day. Carry out physical activity or walk at least twenty minutes a day. Give importance to your nutrition. We are what we eat. Sleep the right number of hours.
You might also like to read: How to start a day a day in a good and happy way – How to finish a day in a good and happy way.
-# 2 Keep in mind we all deserve to live a happy life.
Happiness is our right. We all deserve to be happy, we were born to be happy.
– # 3 Learn to accept ourselves and like our physique.
Unfortunately it’s quite common that a lot of people don’t like their physique. If you don’t like your body, it’s very difficult to love yourself.
Are you overweight or you don’t have enough muscles? Then do something about it.
Are you too short, or you don’t like a particular part of your body? Well, if there is nothing you can do about it, you need to learn to accept things we can’t change and keep in mind there is always someone that is worse off than us.
– # 4 Use the Gratitude List exercise to list things we appreciate about ourselves.
I am sure that must be some good points that we like about our body, so we need to focus on them. Without our body we wouldn’t be able to exist, we need to be grateful for that. You might also like to read: Gratitude List
– # 5 Become Aware of our Thoughts and listen to how we talk to ourselves
“I’m bad.” “It’s all my fault.” “I’m incompetent. I don’t know what I’m doing.” “I’m not (good, smart, attractive, rich, etc.) enough.”
Do any of these thoughts sound familiar? To start loving ourselves we have to stop talking to ourselves like that. We are a work in progress, we need to decide what we want to be and focus on it. We have to stop being negative.
You might also like to read: The importance of our thoughts and How to replace our negative thoughts with positive thoughts.
– # 6 Take time to do the things you love most.
Despite the various commitments that we have in life, it is very important to make some time for ourselves, to do things that make us feel good.
The excuse of not having time, it’s only a trivial excuse.
If we love ourselves we find the time for things that make us feel good …
When we feel good, what remains to be done, then can be done with less effort, just because we feel mentally and physically better! If you found in this post some ideas to follow that could make you feel better, do not neglect them just because you think you do not have time …
You’ll be surprised at how this simple decision can give you back the energy that’s been depleted by all that negativity. So have fun, take some time for yourself to do something you like.
– # 7 Go Out with People Who Appreciate You.
If you love yourself, you want to be a positive person.
Surround yourself with positive people and you’ll be a positive person.
If You love yourself, you should also:
– # 8 Not Be hard on yourself.
Even when you make mistakes do not be hard on yourself.
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~ Albert Einstein
If sometimes when you are trying to create a new good habit and you have a set back into your old bad habit, do not get upset: this is pretty normal, just try harder and do not give up. There is no failure, only feedback.
– # 9 Forgive yourself.
If you made some mistake in the past, it’s not good keep punishing yourself, the past can not be changed. Forgive yourself, just let it go and you will feel better.
– # 10 Forgive others.
Do yourself a favor. Forgive other people, they might not deserve your forgiveness but you need peace of mind. Be angry is like having a poison inside us, love yourself, avoid to dwell on anger.
– # 11 Stop comparing yourself to the others.
We are all unique and special. Don’t measure yourself against anyone. Rather, see them as your inspiration and recognize your own uniqueness. Success can be defined in so many ways. What works for some may not always work for you.
– # 12 Stop trying to be perfect.
There’s no such thing as being perfect, be yourself and don’t give importance to what other people think of you.
– # 13 Do not let anyone treat you bad or make you feel inferior.
If you love yourself enough, you can’t allow anyone treat you bad or make you feel inferior. Just let them know politely that you are not happy about that and if there is no change from them and you can, just walk away.
– # 14 Do not abuse your body, treat it well, is the only body you have!
Here we are at the end of this post, thanks for reading it all to the end.
One last small suggestion: Keep in Mind, We change by creating a new habit and we create a habit by doing the same thing repeatedly.
Love yourself and have a healthy self-esteem and make it an habit!
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”. Aristotle
