Love yourself to spread the love. If you’re alone, it’s hard to feel the love. If you’re surrounded by a household of people, you can go blind to love.
Come back to innocent love with life, that you felt before any hurts you experienced in life.
Decide to love yourself so you can be and show up as an empowered you. Make this the year the one you find out what your authentic desires are in your heart, not what your only options appear to be.
Then, you can manifest a larger dream, fulfilling opportunities, or relationship far greater than you can imagine.
Maybe you first need to find your deeper strength or who you are inside.
Here are 5 self-love lists to help you empower and appreciate yourself.
1. Self-appreciation list.
Use this list to empower yourself when you look in the mirror.
Smile in the mirror. And really the person that’s inside the exterior. Too often we put on our daily face and fix our hair, but we don’t take a moment to appreciate ourselves.
Write yourself a few inspiring word reminders on your mirror, such as “I am love” or “brave pretty (or handsome) is…”.
You could stick a post-it note, but a more interesting way would be to use a tube of lipstick and handwrite for a personal touch. If that sounds too girly, you can write a note or card and keep with your shaving tools, dopp kit, or makeup bag. Get creative.
The point is you pleasantly encourage and surprise yourself each day when you go about your daily routine in the bathroom. Change the message up when you get used to seeing.
Bury old traits about yourself that you didn’t love.
2. Self-Care Routine Improvement List
Find a new self-care routine to help you feel like yourself again (if you’ve been feeling out of sorts), and fall in love with who you’re becoming.
Taking care of yourself is the best thing you can do for yourself. A little change can make a big difference.
Make a list of self-care daily routine changes or additions you want to implement, and what you need to make the improvements.
Some ideas:
Give yourself a daily facial. Find an anti-aging fresh facial scrub cleaner and moisturizer, and retinoid products to smooth out acne and wrinkles. Work on eliminating any sun spots that keep you from feeling good about yourself.
Find a new SPF daily routine. Get sunshine for natural Vitamin D that can help you feel happy. Know the sun has intensified, much stronger than when I was growing up when we would wear SPF 2 or less. Now I wear SPF 50. Get in a habit of wearing sunscreen year round before you go outside or else your anti-aging skin routine is sabotaged.
Personally I don’t like sun tan coconut lotion smells, and all day. Researching online what you want to purchase will help you, over going without knowledge to the drug store where you can find good products behind the glass cases. You can find anti-aging daily products with SPF that work, and decide to wear caps and light cover ups especially in the summer.
You could find a new apparel look for mood reasons. Change your colors on your clothing, watch band, or glasses. Find new energizing colors that inspire you. When you look at your flip flops, sneakers or toes, seeing bright colors can make you feel happier. Colors make a difference. Yellow is a naturally happy color. If you wear, you’d better be prepared to be in a sunny mood. Red is more of a shocking color that attracts bees, where pink is more pleasant for attracting relationships.
Eat healthier. What you bring inside your kitchen, you’ll end up eating. If you prepare your own meals, you can have more energy selecting healthy ingredients. Most healthy meals take just minutes to prepare.
You can also control your variety. Adding herbs can make a big difference and most spices are really healthy for you like cayenne pepper. Spices bring out the flavors, similar to if you went to a restaurant. You could add tarragon spice to eggs and turmeric to potatoes. And now you have an enhanced gourmet breakfast.
Or if you’re a vegetarian, you could make vegetable or spinach pasta. You could use pesto or butternut squash sauce to substitute tomato sauce. If you’re not a fan of broccoli that has a strange texture, you could take chicken broth and blend/puree with broccoli. Now you have broccoli soup you could chill like cold summer cucumber soup.
3. Daily Happiest Memory List
Make a list of your happiest memories each day.
Start your day by being kind to yourself. These days, our society has a heightened self-awareness to being kind and compassionate to not offend other people.
In our changing society, we can forget to be nice to ourselves. We can worry, get frustrated easily, or be hard on ourselves as we don’t always know what to do.
Just let it be. If you have a free moment, just sit still until you have to do something. Your mind is always running, so if you can get a peaceful moment, cherish that moment.
If you’re having a rough day or an off feeling day, consciously witness, stop what you’re doing, and then take a breather. When you take the pressure off yourself to complete your task list, then you can reset and get back to your day. Setting up your day for flexibility and be able to switch direction is a good idea.
While I recommend creating lists, like this one, I don’t recommend a daily to-do list. Rigidity can become counter productivity as you can seek quantity over quality.
If you happen to do more than you expected on a day, the next day you may feel more relaxed to do less. Spreading out tasks and getting balance can be the better way so you don’t burn yourself out.
4. Your Authentic List
Be authentic to yourself. Be yourself.
Make a list of how you’ve been authentic to yourself in the past year.
Maybe you’ve had to make a decision that you know in your heart was the right one. If you’re having to make decisions that you don’t agree with inside, trust your gut. Just because everyone is doing, doesn’t make it smart or right for you. Avoid bad decisions made because of a moment in judgment lapse or pride.
You could look at this year as a year to figure out the direction of your life. When you look back, you won’t regret what you didn’t do as next year could be a better year (especially if you believe so).
Be the one that everyone looks up to. You can still show up and be funny or productive. You may just need to find a creative way to share and communicate.
5. Connections List
Make a list of those you connected with this year.
Remind yourself on friends and strangers you have recently helped, or reached out to with your influence. Pat yourself on the back for being a good friend who checks up on others, or helped someone out. If you liked a post on your friends’ social media page or virtually reached out, that counts also. You’re being supportive.
The more you can love on others, the more you can remind yourself that you’re lovable. And, also be the love to yourself, so you can love others.
Remind yourself, what goes around, comes around.
—
Previously published on medium
*******************************
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Talk to you soon.
*************************
Photo credit: Unsplash