Self Love is Hard. Here’s How You Can Start.

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Do you question your worth? Never feel like you are enough? Compare yourself to other people? Think you are not deserving of what you have? Have self-limiting beliefs or focus on others’ needs and neglect your own?

Below are self-love strategies you can start to use today to value and love yourself more. 

I must admit. I’m guilty of these things too. Not as much now as 8 months ago, but it’s a journey made up of consistency and daily actions. That was one of the main reasons why I started this blog and this group. 

When I started this blog I thought most of the writing would be on mindset, self-love, my foster care journey and how to overcome hardships. 

But you guys, it’s so hard. It’s much easier to take an area of interest and experience, like clean beauty or weight loss; research what questions people are asking, and pull from experience to try and provide value through answering those questions. Don’t get me wrong, clean beauty, weight loss, healthy eating, all these things are connected to self-love. It’s just different.

It’s scientific, it’s data-driven, it’s also personal to my journey, but not the deep kind of personal. Not the kind of personal that self-love or worth is. Know what I mean?

I owe it to myself and to you to write about these things. Because if you are reading this, then you may just need to see these tips as much as I need to write them.

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Why Valuing Yourself is so Important?

Real quick let’s just level set at what valuing yourself and self-love means and what other “self” orienting terms they work in hand in hand with. 

If you are just here for the self-love strategies, then jump to the below.

Self-love: to have regard for your own well-being and happiness. 

Self-compassion:is to extend compassion to oneself in instances of perceived inadequacy and failure.

Self-awareness: conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

Self-regulation: controlling of one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals. The ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses. 

These all work together to create a mindset and action that demonstrate that you love and value yourself. 

Self awareness is the ability to to understand your motives and triggers. Those that create feelings of doubt or self-worth.  

As an example, your opinion not being validated could be a trigger. This could manifest into you not feeling that your views have merit.

If you don’t self-regulate and control your thoughts and emotions you may say negative things to yourself vs. shifting your thoughts to a positive place. For example, “my views don’t matter because ______” to “not everyone may agree with me but my opinions are my own and have value”

Once you start to shift your mindset amazing things will start to happen.

The tools and strategies below are tangible ways that you can actually start making this happen for you. I do want to be bluntly honest though, “you can actually start making this happen for you” was intentional wording.

I can’t do this for you, your mother or boss or best friend can’t either. This is up to you. Below are some self-love strategies, but it’s up to you to invest in yourself and to start doing this.

How to Start Valuing and Loving Yourself 

What are ways you can start loving and valuing yourself? 

Well, it starts with being more aware, regulating those feelings, and changing daily actions to demonstrate self-compassion and self-love. Below are some strategies where I’ve found success. 

Self-Love Songs

Create yourself a self-love playlist. I have below my favorites and have embedded the songs so you can listen and see if you want to add this to your personal playlist. 

Stay tuned I’m planning on creating some self-love playlists. 

These songs all speak to empowerment, breaking through self-limitations and loving ourselves. 

This is Me – Kesha

Broken & Beautiful – Kelly Clarkson

Resilient – Katy Perry 

I Am the Fire – Halestrom 

Rise – Katy Perry

Fight Song – Rachel Platten 

Born This Way – Lady Gaga

So Am I – Ava Max

Create Boundaries

There are physical and emotional boundaries. 

Physical boundaries are about literally the act of separating yourself from something that is not healthy. Therefore the inverse is creating a physical environment that aligns with what keeps you whole, keeps you mentally strong, and removing from your environment what does not. 

When you create boundaries, physical or emotional, you are sending a signal that:

I’m important

I value myself and my health

I’m going to create environments that support this.

I’m going to expand the definition here, because to me the outcome of setting physical boundaries is creating your ideal environment by removing certain pieces, so we are going to tiptoe over the line to your ideal environment with these examples.

Examples of creating the ideal environment:

Putting the junk food on the highest level of the pantry,

Sprinkling in inspirational affirmations around the spaces you spend much of your day. 

Emotional Boundaries

Emotional boundaries are what keep us mentally healthy and allow us to separate what other people say and project about us and what we know as our truth.

Reflect back on those situations or people that don’t respect your boundaries? Those that demand too much of you, that don’t lift you up and empower you, that impose their beliefs and opinions on you.

How do you know when your boundaries have been crossed?

Those feelings we talked about, doubting yourself, not feeling enough, the inclination to focus on others over yourself, feeling shame about something, or feeling that your views are not valid.

Pay attention to those feelings, that is the self-awareness piece that is such a critical dependency for self-love.

When people are not respecting your boundaries try to make them more clear. When you don’t value yourself you may not feel confident projecting your desires and boundaries. 

Let’s say you want to focus on your fitness and you are the only one that gets the kids up in the morning or you are working late nights. Start to voice that you’d like 3 days a week to work out in the mornings and ask your significant other to help or add blocks/reminders on your calendar after 5 p.m. so you can make that 6 p.m. workout.    

Self Love Journal

Purchase yourself a self-love journal. It can be used for multiple purposes

• A place to list what your triggers are. What are those things, or feelings that make you feel bad? These will help you become more self-aware and you can start to write down strategies that could help. This could be a whole post in itself.
• List your successes and wins, what experiences are you now having because you are setting boundaries and choosing you?

Start with self-love journal prompts

Another way that self-love journals are commonly used is to cultivate self-love through journal prompts.

Some good prompts to start out with are:

• What are 3 of my strongest strengths?
• What are 5 ways I can show myself love?
• I’m happiest when I’m doing these 3 things
• Today I will accomplish _________
• I want more of ______ in my life
• What are 3 things I’ve done that make me proud?
• What is one self-limiting belief I have about myself and why is it not true?
• What makes me happy that I have not been doing but will start doing today

I’m big on prompts to remind us to be healthy. In the Facebook group I created I have daily prompts around healthy eating, favorite things that make you healthy, goals for the week, etc.

Prompts are important, otherwise, we just get pulled into whatever others are deciding is urgent for us. 

Books About Valuing Yourself

Part of developing the mindset of self-love and self-compassion is hearing and reading about those who’ve come before us. 

Below is a sample list of those books/authors that have been impactful, at times life-changing for me, and those I’ve heard good things about that are on my wish list. 

Emotional Intelligence – Travis Bradberry 

This book is so foundational and the first one I’d recommend you read. It provides a step-by-step guide to emotional intelligence. Two of the main pillars of emotional intelligence are self-awareness and self-regulation, which is critical for self-love and valuing yourself. 

Daring Greatly – Brene Brown

I  have not read this yet, but have heard such great things and it’s on my list. In this book Brene Brown talks about how vulnerability is our strength and what is on the other side if we tapped into the courage we all have to push past our self-limiting beliefs. 

Untamed – Glennon Doyle 

This book was life-changing for me and it was serendipitous that I came to learn about it when I did. It came during a time of my life when it was needed. The main premise is trusting your knowing, to not be defined by other people’s expectations and there you will find your joy.

Mastering Your Mean Girl – Melissa Ambrosini

This is another one I haven’t read, but it’s on my list. I’ve heard good things. This refers to the negative voices in our head telling us we aren’t good enough as our inner mean girl. That’s perhaps the worst part about not valuing yourself, is that you live in fear and don’t pursue your dreams. 

Girl, Wash Your Face – Rachel Hollis

This was a good read. Rachel pulls from her own personal experience to unveil the lies and misconceptions that hold us back.

The Confidence Code – Kathy Kay & Claire Shipman

This is an interesting and more scientific read, but I loved it. It’s been about two years and I actually need to recycle it again into my reading schedule. 

In this book journalists, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman look at neuroscience to see if there is such a thing as a confidence gene and are some of us just born with more confidence, less tendency to question ourselves. Also covers how we can take action to build more confidence and talks about how lack of confidence holds us back.

Do Things That Remind You That You’re Strong  

Step outside of your comfort zone 

This might sound a bit crazy. If you are just working on self-worth to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. It could further make you feel uncomfortable or create triggers where you are comparing yourself to others.

I wouldn’t start with this. I would start with the self-love prompts, the books and the music. All of these to get yourself in the right mindset.

But pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and doing something where there once lied a self-limiting belief can be really empowering and make you start to see the result of what believing in yourself can achieve.

Accomplish something that makes you feel strong 

This is similar to pushing outside of your comfort zone. Except when pushing outside of your comfort zone you are trying something you haven’t done before, something that makes you uncomfortable.

Doing something that makes you feel strong is something you know you are good at. It accomplishes a few things. 

Reminds you of  your strengths, makes sure that you are taking time to focus on you and what makes you happy and it gives you a mental boost after you’ve done it.

Create Daily Rituals

Once you decide how you are going to fill your cup before you empty into others, you want to start forming those things into habits.

One way of doing that is by creating daily rituals. I have a planner that I use and love. It helps me to stay focused on intentionally living. One of the sections of this planner is for your daily rituals, including rituals for different parts of your day.

Putting on paper what you want your day to look like is an important piece in valuing yourself and practicing self-love. It demonstrates that you know what you want to achieve and how to break those goals into daily actions. It signifies a commitment to the things that fulfill you vs. letting everyone else’s needs pull you where they want you to be. 

Ideas for Daily Rituals  

Daily rituals for your self-love journey could include:

• Makeup
• Working out
• Read a daily affirmations
• Skincare
• Walking
• Journal 
• Drinking water 

Below is an example of my daily rituals for Q4

Take the first step. Share one thing you will start doing today from this list?

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