The topic of self-love has become so common in our daily conversations. At work or at home, with colleagues or with friends and family, we talk about this special love that psychologists, monks, life coaches and so many others encourage us to practice.

From the classic You can only truly love someone else, if you love yourself first to Give yourself a break and some love or even Fall in love with yourself, the topic seems to pop up in so many different ways.

Sometimes, the message can be confusing if we don’t understand the underlying point that the person is trying to make. As meaningless as messages such as these can often sound, self love is an important part of our personal development.

Everything good and beautiful in our life starts from self love. From the moment that you realise that you are a wonderful person, worthy of trust, appreciation and love.

Why Self Love Matters For Us All

We are not talking about egocentrism or narcissism – two concepts often confused with self love. It’s not about being selfish or self-sufficient, but about accepting ourselves the way we are. We can do this by recognising the limits of our beliefs, biases, fears, mistakes, needs and pleasures.

The second step towards self-love is to change the things that we don’t like about ourselves, to turn them into something positive.

In order to become the person that we truly want to be, we have to accept and embrace who we are at this present moment. We need to let go of the feelings of guilt and shame that we may have developed over the years without even being aware of it.

Instead, we can show ourselves compassion for our efforts even when we fail, we can value every little achievement. This is self-love – the most beautiful and fulfilling kind of love.

And yes, if we are capable of loving ourselves this way, we can do it for any other creature too. It is simply a question of time, patience, curiosity and openness.

How Do You Get To That Place? How Do You Achieve Self-Love?

Learning from other people’s experiences help. Here are my top three daily practices to inspire you find self-love:

1. Open yourself to mindfulness practice.

That is all you need to do, at least in the beginning. Be constantly aware of your body’s needs, the state of your mind and your emotions. Start first thing in the morning. Notice some things that would usually pass unnoticed.

Ask yourself: Are you still tired although you just woke up? Do you feel any pain? Are you hungry or thirsty? How do you feel about the day ahead? Are there any stressful thoughts running through your mind? Are you in a hurry? How do you feel about the weather? What would you like to do today? What do you need to do today? Is there any way to do both and if not, how does it feel?

By repeating this routine, you will find that you become more conscious of who you are, what is important to you, what makes you happy or angry, sad or nervous. As you work with these, you will get closer to your essence, to who you want to be, rather than who other people say you are.

2. Learn to say no

As hard as it might be, saying NO is the healthiest thing you can do as a sign of self-love. Most of us find it hard to say NO – at work, to friends or family. Even if we know that saying YES is the worst idea in the world, for some reason we still do it.

Then we find ourselves caught in stressful situations, pressed by unfair deadlines or overwhelmed by negative feelings. All because we were too afraid, or too ashamed to say no.

We need to learn the difference between choosing to help others, and forcing ourselves to say YES to things that we don’t really want to do.

3. Embrace change

Every once in a while we should welcome change into our life. Change is what we fear the most. The unknown of the future scares us, even when the present doesn’t please us at all.

As a result, we stay with the wrong people and in the wrong jobs for such a long time that we end up forgetting about our dreams and needs. We grow empty, our energy levels drop and nothing can help us to feel connected to ourselves.

We end up hating ourselves for being something that we never wanted. Change is the only way that we can overcome disappointment and forgotten dreams. Accepting change means that we trust ourselves enough to believe that we can succeed in something new.

The courage to step out of our comfort zone is the most beautiful sign of self-love.

SparkYourBloom Today And Everyday!