The Powerful Ways to Practice Unconditional Self Love
Appreciation for oneself comes from behaviors that enhance physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. Self-love involves prioritizing your health and happiness. Take care of yourself and don’t sacrifice your well-being to satisfy others. Unconditional Self love implies not accepting less. Self-love is not selfish; it creates a positive attitude toward yourself and others, makes you more self-aware and sets healthy boundaries with people, opens your heart and lets you feel your feelings and emotions, frees you from fears, and lets you pursue your passions with confidence and grace. In this blog, we will discuss the practical ways of loving yourself.
Why self-love matters?
If you don’t love yourself, you may criticize yourself. “I’m worthless”, “I could never succeed at this”, or “I’m not smart enough” are examples of negative self-talk. These thoughts might cause anxiety, despair, and hopelessness. Like any connection, your self-relationship fluctuates and needs daily feeding. It evolves with you, your environment, and others. Love oneself is a lifelong, healthy, and satisfying journey. Like most relationships, your relationship with yourself has ups and downs, but your attitude toward yourself is the solution to how to love yourself more. A closer relationship with oneself brings love and happiness to you and others. Love yourself! Unless you love yourself, how can others love you? When we love ourselves, others love us back because they mirror us. Learning to love and nurture yourself changes our relationships with others.
Top 5 Powerful Ways To Practice Unconditional Self Love
Below are the top 5 best ways to practice unconditional self love.
1 Self-Compassion
Being kind to yourself is self-compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff defines self-compassion as self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness (Neff, 2003). Prof. Neff asks her readers, “What language do you use with yourself when you notice a flaw or make a mistake?” Do you criticize yourself or be kind? How does being excessively self-critical make you feel? She explains that we often treat ourselves harsher than we would others or expect others to treat us. Observing this loud inner voice is a first step toward softly subduing and actively softening it. Finally, try rephrasing your critical judgments in gentler, more forgiving phrases.
2. Eliminate the need for perfection
If you want to practice unconditional self-love, stop thinking about being perfect in your physique, life, behaviors, career, and relationships. Perfectionism is untrue. Never expect perfection. Good to know nobody is. Nobody strives for perfection; everyone has unique traits and characteristics. Too much perfection makes us afraid of failing. If we want perfection, we always think “What could or should be.” Life is not perfect, and even if we think parts of it are, what does perfect mean? Because everyone defines it differently, getting ‘perfect results’ is impractical and holds us back professionally and emotionally. Rather than perfection, seek growth.
3. Forgive Yourself
Adults who underwent six weeks of forgiveness training reported less stress, anger, and hurt (Harris, et al., 2006). They felt more optimistic immediately and four months after training. Remember a time or two when you did something terrible, humiliating, or ashamed? Drop that. While you can’t undo the past, you can impact the future. Consider it a lesson and believe in your ability to change. Be kind to yourself as you would someone else who is flawed. Challenges are inevitable. Everyone makes mistakes and regrets actions. These moments can be used to cultivate self-love by being gentle to ourselves. We can recognize negative self-talk without self-criticism.
4. Stop needing others approval
You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and someone will still dislike them.” Dita Von Tees. You can love yourself without others’ approval. Giving up your need for approval will help you achieve happiness and heal from previous suffering. Some of our approval needs stem from the past. When we let go of our past, it feels like a load is lifted. No longer must we convey that. We deserve better. Our worth is not founded on others’ approval or our accomplishments. Outside forces don’t decide our worth. Learning to love yourself unconditionally requires understanding this fact.
5. Practice Self-Gratitude
We can be grateful for who we are and what we’ve done. We might say “thanks” for taking care of our health. Or we may pat ourselves on the back for making someone happy. We may be grateful for our pretty cheeks, calmness, and excellent cookie-making skills. Try finding something about yourself to appreciate each day. It takes discipline to find thankfulness. Celebrate your daily successes, no matter how minor, to stay motivated and feel like you’re reaching your goals.
Conclusion
Loving yourself means practicing unconditional self love and self-care in your daily life, from what you eat to who you love and surround yourself with. Self-love is continual. Forever. Each of us deserves self-love. Maybe self-love is hard because our mind has been programmed to think otherwise by childhood, relationships, or other factors. Our mindset typically determines self-love or lack thereof. Thus, inner work is necessary to find restful calm and let go of compulsive ideas and unpleasant chatter. Learning that naturally leads to self-love and compassion. You experience pure happiness as self-awareness expands.
