By SHANNON SKAE, Health and Life Coach at Revive with Shan
“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.”
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it is essential to remember the most important person in your life: you.
Our lives are filled with stress, chaos, and rushing around. We get caught up in a frenzy of constantly working and then using the weekend to either catch up on work or sleep due to exhaustion from the week. This leads us to a sense of being out of balance and feelings of anger, frustration, and anxiety.
Self-love can help you find your balance. Self-love refers to taking care of yourself. This sounds simple, but most of us do not practice this daily. Or very often at all. We all need to find a moment to pause and remember our needs.
Here are some ways that you can practice self-love:
- Partake in a hobby;
- Do something adventurous that you have always wanted to do for yourself;
- See a therapist for any difficulties you may be experiencing, such as a past trauma;
- Get some pampering (facial, massage);
- Practice meditation or yoga;
- Exercise and move your body;
- Throw out your scale (this is not a true reflection of how you look anyway);
- Spend time with friends;
- Communicate with kindness;
- Practice encouraging yourself;
- Take yourself out for lunch or coffee and enjoy spending time with yourself;
- Read a book and drink some tea;
- Clean your house and your room;
- Set boundaries and say no to others when you need to;
- Understand that accepting yourself means you are not perfect;
- Accept that your job is not to make other people like you;
- Write down five things you are grateful for;
- Take some deep breaths if you are feeling anxious.
You can do most of these without taking up too much time!
Practice self-love because you cannot care for others if you do not care for yourself.
