Self-love is a term we might have heard a lot of and perhaps might not fully understand. It describes the state of nurturing yourself and filling your cup enough with love that it overflows and fills other people’s lives too. In order to offer our loving energy out into the world, we need to vibrate love from within; here are five ways to cultivate a little more self-love:
Eat Mindfully
Eating can be a ritual of gratitude and a moment to honour the that grow from the earth and sustain you. It is a moment to contemplate our direct connection with nature and a reminder that we were born from it, supported by it and belong to it.
Exercise Mindfully
If exercise feels like a dreaded obligation, triggers negative self-talk or leads you to run on a treadmill and stare at the wall of a gym, this is the very opposite of mindful exercise. Exercising mindfully is respecting yourself enough to find a form of movement that you enjoy. It is doing it for your health and enjoying the feeling of release while you run or swim or dance. Exercising mindfully is an opportunity to feel alive and connect with your strength.
Nurture Your Thoughts
“Nurture your thoughts, for you will never go higher than you think,” is a quote by politician and writer Benjamin Disraeli that perfectly illustrates the importance of tending your inner garden. Pulling out the weeds, cultivating nutrients, for positive things to grow and turning your face to the sun. If you force weeds out, they break at the top and regrow but if you gently pull, they come out at the roots. By keeping this in mind we can remember to let go of thoughts that are not serving us gently, to allow thoughts that do serve us to arrive.
Pamper Yourself
Run yourself a bath, make a foot scrub and massage your feet, light a candle and some incense in your room or read a book. Your actions can replace your thoughts, if you start acting like you love yourself, you will start to feel it shortly after. If you do these things on a weekly basis, it will build on itself like wildfire and you’ll find your ability to love other people will grow as you start to feel loved, looked after and supported.
Be Grateful For Your Body
Opinions of the perfect body have changed throughout history and there will always be people that match up with that ideal and those that don’t. This very fact makes it clear that opinions are fickle and therefore not worth paying attention to. Your body was not designed to win beauty pageants, it is designed to explore, climb mountains, travel the world and hug your loved ones. Your body is a tremendous thing; finding reasons to be grateful for what it gives you is an endless source of self-love.
