Learn To Love Yourself

Do you love yourself?

Whether your Facebook status says single, in a relationship, married, divorced or the oh so intriguing to others “it’s complicated” love should start within…

In the words of Justin Bieber:

YOU should go and love yourself

Many of us are lucky enough to have a few people in our life that we love; children, parents, friends, siblings… And all of those relationships are important but you are the most important person in your life.  But if you are tired of tearing your hair out and want to take your life back then its vital that you look after yourself first if you are going to have any hope of juggling all of those balls and staying sane!

So I want you to think about how you can love yourself today. If that sounds a bit odd don’t worry you don’t have to tell anyone but I want to challenge you to have a rethink about the L word.

Susan Jeffers said…

“Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good — on your mirror!”

… why stop at “like” though, next time you look in the mirror wouldn’t life be better if you could truly say “I love myself”.

I’ll go first…

“I love myself!”

And yes it still feels a bit weird saying that and I went on a difficult journey before I realised how important it was to love myself. But it is important for lots of reasons so I’m going to give you my top 3:

3 reasons it’s important to love yourself:

• The best way to teach your kids to love, value and respect themselves is for YOU to lead by example.
• Loving yourself means you can start being a better, happier version of you and your kids need a happy mum not a stressed and shouty mum.
• When you love yourself you don’t need the approval of others and that means you can start to live the life you want to live not the life you think you SHOULD live.

3 ways to love yourself:

• Challenge those critical self-thoughts. Would you talk to your best friend the way you talk to yourself?
• Take time out regularly. Whether you are at home or work take some time out every day to STOP, sit down somewhere quiet, breathe properly. Take the time to enjoy a cup of tea or read a chapter of a book. You are not productive when you are constantly on the go so taking a break is better for your productivity as well as your wellbeing
• Say no to someone. We all know someone who always wants help with something. If someone immediately springs to mind plan how you are going to say no next time or say yes I can do X for you but I’m really busy so could you do Y for me.

If you are feeling stressed and shouty, burned out, overwhelmed, irritable or just plain tired it impacts your family as much as it impacts you. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to take the spotlight off plate spinning regularly and put it on self care

So…. what are you going to do TODAY to love yourself?