Many people are successful at everything but love. They can turn a project into gold or lead a team to do something incredible, but their love life is in shambles. You can blame your schedule or your career, but there is no reason for you not to have the love you want and deserve.
Creating Self-love
Most people don’t understand the concept of self-love. We are all taught to be selfless, so self-love seems wrong. Real self-love isn’t selfish. It is simply understanding that you have worth and are deserving of love. It is having an understanding of both your gifts and flaws and be vulnerable enough to share yourself with someone else.
Having self-love is the primary first step to create real love in your life. Most struggle with how to do that, but here are five ways you can start implementing loving yourself into your life.
- Evaluate yourself.
You need to spend some time looking at your deepest thoughts about yourself to find out if you truly love yourself or if you are just “getting by.” Do you think you are worth spending time with or your money on? Do you dress up when there is no occasion?
A good way to analyze yourself is how you treat others versus treating yourself. If you are always giving in to others, sacrificing yourself, but never giving yourself time and a break, it is a good indication you view others are more worthy than yourself.
Giving to others is great, but it is okay to say “no” if you need time for something important to you. Spending time helping others is an awesome thing to do, but not if you never get any time to re-energize yourself.
Another way to understand how you view yourself is to analyze your “inner voice.” Think back to see if that voice is overly critical or toxic. Think about the language used. This is a good indicator of how you view yourself.
- Be generous with time for yourself.
This is one of the hardest things for anyone to do. After all, everyone is busy but setting aside time for yourself is crucial to learning to love yourself. You can take a nice bubble bath or have a spa day. Some people find comfort in reading a book all day. Perhaps, cooking something that is both healthy and delicious will be time well spent for you.
- Journal.
Taking a few minutes out of each day to express your feelings and daily events will go a long way into both understanding yourself and loving yourself. By journaling, you are permitting yourself to feel exactly what you are feeling without any judgment. It will help you later as you look back on your journals to see how you’ve grown.
- Spend money on yourself.
It doesn’t need to be a fancy car or an expensive purse. You can do something as simple as buying yourself flowers or a small gift. Do for yourself exactly as you would for someone else. Treating yourself to a small gift regularly builds up your worth within your mind because you tend to value what you spend money on.
- Don’t expect someone else to fill the void only you can fill.
A mistake many people make is they look to a romantic partner to make them feel better about themself. That will never work and the effort of trying to fulfill the expectation will leave both of you disappointed and exhausted.
The truth is no one can fill that void within you but yourself. This void is how you view yourself, how you make yourself happy and truly how to find yourself worthy of love. So, how do you fill it on your own?
You can explore yourself. That means trying new things to find out your abilities and what you like. You create goals that challenge you, but that isn’t impossible to reach. You practice self-care by keeping yourself groomed and looking attractive. You realize that you are valuable enough to spend time with by doing things alone.
This can be difficult for some people, and it does take practice. Even still, going to a movie or out to eat at a nice restaurant alone will make a statement to yourself and the world. That statement isn’t depressing or advertising your loneliness either.
No, the statement you make is that you are worthy of having a good time, you are worthy of a good meal that someone else prepares, and that you are worthy of time. You will find that spending time with yourself is one of the greatest investments you can make.
After all, if you don’t like to be with you, how can you expect anyone else to enjoy it?
One final thought is for you to figure out where you get any self-defeating attitudes. Many find they get them from the households they grew up in. These were family expectations or attitudes that weren’t formally discussed or taught but were presented as an example.
For instance, some women may notice their mothers never bought anything for themselves. While many honor this type of self-sacrifice, it may not apply to you. Your parents may have gone through a drought of finances and she put everyone else first. Maybe she simply didn’t like to buy things or had an overly frugal attitude. That doesn’t make you any less honorable by spending some money on yourself, as long as the basic needs of your family are met.
Learning more about your attitudes and yourself while changing some things will do much to make you attractive to others. That could lead to some exciting romantic possibilities.
