5 Ways to Deepen Your Self-Love
Today is Valentine's Day. The day we celebrate love. I'm all about loving others. But what about loving yourself up? How do you truly and deeply love the person staring back at you in the mirror?
- Really loving yourself starts with deeply knowing who you are and what's truly important to you. It may take some time to figure out what makes your heart sing, but keep journaling and meditating (if that's your thing) to connect with yourself on a regular basis. Check our my post on "10 Ways to Rediscover your Passion" for more ideas on how you can learn about what moves you most.
- Next, be adamant about integrating these things into your life. Make them a priority! Allow yourself to have and do these things that speak to you. And keep doing them.
- Make a list of your top five values. What qualities are the most important to you? These will be characteristics that you live by, and which you look for in others. They could be authenticity, communication, freedom, creativity, leadership--whatever feels right in your heart.
As you go about making choices in your life, check in to see whether or not each decision takes you closer or farther from your core values. Doing things that are in alignment with your core values will be things you "want" to do. They'll be exciting, fun and rewarding! When you're doing something you think you "have" to do, you're out of alignment with your core values. I'll write more about this later...
- What are the specific things you do to show love to other people? Listening to their needs? Giving gifts? Saying kind words? Make a list of everything you can think of, and get really specific. How can you turn these around and give them to yourself? Find a way and give yourself that gift of self-love.
- One more thing. Every day for one week, try writing a list of 30 things for which you're grateful. 30 sounds like a lot, but it's after the first 10 or 20 that you really have to dig for things that aren't immediately obvious. Do it for longer than a week if you can :) When you can shift your perspective from what's wrong to what's right in your world, you can have a huge perspective flip.