It gets old hearing it doesn’t it?
“You should just focus on loving yourself”.
How do I love myself?
Well lucky for you, I’m here to give you 5 steps for you to learn to love yourself.
Why is loving yourself important you may ask?
You’re the only person you have to live with from the beginning of your life to the end. You should learn to enjoy your company.
On top of that, when you love yourself, you start to make better decisions for yourself. When you start making better decisions for yourself, your life improves, and then you love yourself even more!
A great loop that creates happiness.
You’re the master of your own destiny. Your destiny starts with loving yourself!
So let’s get to it!
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1. Acknowledge who you are and how far you’ve come.
Take the time to reflect. You are where you are now because of a combination of all the decisions you’ve made in the past. No matter who you are, you’ve overcome some incredible things.
Take the moment to look back on all you’ve overcome, and be proud of it. Take a look at all the good you’ve done. All the times you’ve made others smile or laugh. All the times you’ve helped others.
You’ve touched many people’s lives, be proud. You deserve love.
Just as you are all combinations of all the decisions you’ve made in the past, your future is all combinations of all the decisions you will make from now on.
Make those decisions with love in your heart.
2. Tell yourself, you love yourself
This is an exercise I learned from the book “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” by Kamal Ravikant.
It’s simple.
Look in the mirror in your eyes and don’t look away for 5 minutes. During these 5 minutes, continuously tell yourself out loud that you love yourself.
This will end up programming yourself to start making those better decisions and start loving yourself.
This sounds ridiculous, I know.
Trust me though, it works.
3. Cut out negativity
Sometimes it can be hard to love yourself when you are surrounded by negativity. Evaluate who is in your life and what you surround yourself around negatively.
It may be time to cut some people out of your life. People who make you feel down, people who tell you that you are not good enough to accomplish something, and people who just piss you off to be around.
Surround yourself with people who bring you up, encourage you to do better, believe in you, and love you!
It’s easier to love yourself when you’re surrounded by people who love you!
4. Practice gratitude
Do you have a gratitude journal? Do you say what you’re grateful for out loud, every day?
Probably not and that’s okay, but you should.
I recommend starting with this. Sit down, close your eyes, and feel what you are thankful for, feel it in your heart.
Great! Now say these things out loud when you feel them.
When you start to be more grateful for what you have, you start to love life more. When you love life more, you naturally start to love yourself more.
5. Decide who you want to be.
Now that you know all you’ve accomplished, all you’ve overcome, and all the good you’ve done, it’s time to decide who you want to be.
You are your life’s driver.
You can be anyone you want to be.
Identify who that person is, and take the steps to become that person.
Want to be in better shape? Change your diet and work out more.
Want to make more friends? Check out meetup.com , join a team in any group sport or go out to the bar.
Want to learn new skills? Take courses on Udemy, find an in-person tutor, or join a class!
Progress breeds happiness. Happiness breeds love. It’s easy to love yourself when you see your constant improvement when you hit those goals you set and feel that pride!
You can be whoever you want to be and it’s time to take control of your life and be that person you will love.
It starts now.
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Conclusion
Everyone is at different parts in their lives and everyone is uniquely themselves. For some people loving themselves is more difficult than for others, but it is possible for everyone to feel love.
Your life will become remarkably better, faster than you can imagine, when you feel that deep love for yourself, and make decisions accordingly.
Always take the time to reflect on how far you’ve come. Remember where you were 5 years ago? Things changed a lot, right?
Imagine where you can be 5 years from now.
We love you!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Darius Bashar on Unsplash
