Loving and caring for yourself is something that no one can do for you, however you see yourself, that's exactly how others will see you.
Self love is all about appreciating yourself, putting yourself first, recognising that you are worth much more than any precious thing on the earth, it's all about not looking down on yourself, treating yourself with dignity, kindness and love.
If you love yourself, others will see reasons to love you, as the saying goes we cannot give what we don't have.
Self love isn't about being a narcissist, as the phrase might suggest, it's more are about prioritizing yourself, its about ensuring that you get all the love, kindness, respect, value, worth etc that you deserve. It involves looking after yourself, nurturing your body, soul and mind, ensuring that you're emotional, spiritually and physically taken care of.
Share with us two simple habits you incorporate into your routine that gradually builds your self-esteem and makes you love yourself more.
Some Habits that I incorporate into my routine that makes me love myself the more.
Forgiving Myself
For a very long time, I used to be quite hard on myself, I didn't really let things go easily I would continue thinking about bad experiences, mistakes I had made in the past that I had no control over, or neither could I change it, as it was already in the past, but I still kept hanging on to it.
I discovered that it wasn't really doing me any good, rather it was taking much from me, it was sapping me and leaving me drained and always feeling like I didn't deserve to move forward.
But at some point in my life, I had to make an evaluation of myself, and I found out that this very behavior was leading me nowhere. So I made a decision to forgive myself always, it wasn't easy at first, you know how difficult it is to do away with bad habits or bad characters, you keep relapsing until you get your desired result.
Sometime ago I was to be given a bag of rice and vegetable oil during a particular time, the security man had asked me to go pick mine up, so I went downstairs where they were distributing it, and I told the man that I would get mine on Friday after work, but I made a mistake, I should have picked up the one meant for me and keep with someone around even if I wasn't going to take it home that day. By the time it was Friday, every thing had finished, that was the response I got, I started feeling really bad, I thought about all of the what if's, I was hard on myself because I knew how that grocery would go a long way for my family.
Although I finally got it, but after that period I decided to take it easy with myself, forgive myself and not hold on to mistakes of the past, and also because I won't be able to change anything, what is done is done.
So far so good it has really been helpful, although there are sometimes when I would almost go back to my old ways but I made sure to subconsciously retrace my steps.
Celebrating My Wins
This is something that I just started doing, no matter how small any of my achievements is, I take a moment to celebrate and appreciate myself regarding that achievement because it's not so easy to achieve something.
I do this by sometimes just mentally patting myself on the back, but when it's something really big, I take myself out, treat myself to something good, and by the time I'm done I feel really good and ready to take on the world hehe.
This is my entry to the #hiveghana weekly prompt on self-love.
All images are mine except otherwise stated
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