Let’s Talk About Love Baby….Love….

I’ve spoken to a bunch of ladies at this point, and I’ve asked them (so far) roughly 67 questions per person. Wait, let me correct that; I asked them 66 (I knew their names, and that was question 1). 

The questions I asked ranged from practical things (wills, life insurance etc) to what the one thing they wished they knew sooner was. There were, of course, a variety of answers, but a good number of women said that they wished they knew to love and accept themselves sooner.

That got me thinking…..how do we love ourselves? Is it a secret formula that only a handful of people have access to? Or, is it something we can learn to do? We’ve all had those days when we are harder on ourselves than we need to be, we forget to forgive ourselves the way we would forgive others and we set ridiculous standards for ourselves that we would never accept from anyone else. 

But what do we do about that? 

Here are some basic beginning steps that may help you to increase your love for yourself

FIGURE OUT WHO YOU ARE

What do I mean by this? We need to start somewhere, where better than the beginning? We all have a sense of who we are, but you need to really take some time to understand yourself. How do you see yourself? What are your values, goals, ambitions and dreams? If you write these down it may make it easier to see the patterns, which may make it easier to determine what is really important to you. 

SELF-EVALUATE YOUR SELF CRITICISM

Write down the things you’re hardest on yourself about so you can see them in front of you. Now look closely at them, and ask yourself “If my best friend said these things about him/herself, how would I respond?”. I want you to consider what your response to your friend would be, why would you stick up for them, and yet you won’t do that for yourself?

I don’t say this to judge you in any way, I in fact am notorious for doing this to myself. I feel confident in suggesting that we question these things because I know how it feels to be that negative toward myself. 

When we think in negative ways about ourselves we do more damage than when others treat us negatively. It’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole of self-contempt which can lead to feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety and even depression. We need to consciously pull ourselves out of it. 

I was listening to a book recently by a woman named Rachel Hollis, I actually listened to two of her books back to back, so I’m not sure which one this concept came from but the books were called “Girl, Wash your Face” and “Girl, Stop Apologizing” (I recommend reading or listening to them both if you want to feel motivated and are in to self-help style stuff). In one of the books she says something along the lines of when a toddler is learning to walk, and they fall down, we don’t get angry with them, we encourage them to try again. This resonated with me because how many of us do this? 

When we’re learning something new, be it a practical skill, or changing a mindset that we’ve harbored for years, if we fail, mess up, go back to what is familiar and comfortable even if it’s destructive, we get angry with ourselves. We can end up having some very mean self-talk, things we would never, ever say to someone else, we give up and figure that we are failures. But now imagine, if that’s the way that we treated that toddler learning to walk, they’d never learn. 

It’s time to evaluate that negative self-talk and remind ourselves that learning a new skill, trying to change our mindsets to accept ourselves and be kinder to ourselves is hard work. We are likely going to fail at times, we’re going to make mistakes, but we need to talk to that inner child and cheer them on and encourage them, so they can grow their own legs and help us to walk forward in our lives. 

APPRECIATE YOUR POSITIVE QUALITIES

If you are a person who is accepting of yourself and you don’t struggle with intense insecurities, please share your secret with me! I mean that genuinely, not in a sarcastic or mocking way. I have a lot of respect for people who do see their worth and value it, it’s who I strive to be one day. 

In the meantime, I am dealing with daily insecurities. They can impact me in all aspects of my life, and similar to the self-criticism, they’re hard to overcome. I had a Psychologist once ask me to name off my positive traits, and I’m not sure if it was because I felt on the spot, or if it was because I didn’t really have a rapport with this person (I, along with all of my colleagues were required to meet with this person), I completely blanked. I could literally not come up with one single thing and that made me cry. I couldn’t believe that at 39 years old I had no idea what positive qualities I had. 

She made a suggestion that day, which I think may be a useful tool in reminding us to look for these things and repeat them to ourselves. She suggested that every day I write down at least three things that are good about me. She told me that at first, it would be difficult,but it should, over time, get easier. Now, full disclosure, I did not formally do this. I did, however, adapt it in a way that worked for me. I started paying closer attention. When I notice something, even something as simple as I look in the mirror and think “Hey, I look kind of pretty today”, I say it outloud to myself. If I realize that I handled something well, I acknowledge it to myself. Essentially I am consciously giving myself credit, where I feel credit is due, the same as I would do for someone else, and you know what? It’s working! I’m still a work in progress, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely!

BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND BE FORGIVING

I know that this kind of repeats some of the other pieces of this, but I feel like it sums it up nicely. 

One of the questions that I asked each woman I spoke with is “what are the three most important character traits for someone to have”. They didn’t have a long time to think of the answer (I mean, they could have taken as long as they wanted, but most had the answer pretty quickly). For each of these women, these character traits were a part of their values. They were the things that they deemed the most important. 

The most common answer amongst them was Honesty. Consider that for a minute if you will….

The most common trait that people value is honesty and yet we all tell ourselves lies about ourselves daily. Maybe not everyone does this, but I certainly am guilty of it.  I want you to sit down, like right now, and make a list of the five most wonderful things about yourself.  

BE HONEST

It’s not selfish, conceited or vain to know your worth and when you lie to yourself and tell yourself that you are awful in so many ways. Really consider it, what are your five best traits…I’ll go first…

I am intelligent, I am strong, I am resilient, I am kind and I am a caregiver. 

See that wasn’t that hard….now you try….

The other half of this is recognizing when we make a mistake, owning it and taking responsibility for ourselves and our actions. It doesn’t do you any good to blame your mistakes on someone else. Sometimes, we are victims, but if we continuously want our mistakes to be someone else’s fault, it takes control of the situation away from us. 

It is more empowering to be honest and own our mistakes. We all make them, we forgive others when they make them. Let’s do this kindness to ourselves and say “hey, I messed up, I realize this is where I went wrong and I’m going to try and do better in the future”. Own the mistake, learn from it and grow from it and you will end up feeling less guilt, less shame and more in control of circumstances that aren’t going the way you had hoped. 

Like I said at the beginning, this is just a start. Changing the way you think and feel about yourself is going to be a long process, it’s not about perfection, it’s about making progress and the smallest efforts daily add up to a whole lot of success in the long run. 

If you’re comfortable doing so, leave me a comment letting me know what your strategies for showing yourself love and acceptance are! I’d love to hear from you!

XO Sabrina