How To Love Yourself - The Seven Principles Of Self Love
Last updated on : December 28 2022
Article Summary
Self-love is our love and appreciation for ourselves, while self-care refers to our actions to nurture and care for ourselves. Many people struggle with self-love, often comparing themselves to others and feeling pessimistic about their lives. However, practicing self-love can have numerous benefits, such as improved mental health and increased self-confidence.
There are seven principles of self-love, including treating your body as a temple through healthy eating and exercise and developing a strong and positive mindset. Other tenets include setting boundaries, practicing self-acceptance, and taking responsibility for your happiness.
To practice self-love, engaging in activities such as taking breaks, setting aside time for hobbies and relaxation, and seeking support from others is vital. By prioritizing self-love and self-care, individuals can improve their overall well-being and lead happier and more fulfilling lives.
What Is Self-Love (and why is it different to self-care)
If we understand the love we feel for others, then self-love is the love we feel for ourselves.
For people we care about, love might involve us taking care of their urgent needs, helping them with something important, or sacrificing something we desire for someone else (but not sacrificing our needs). These acts often accompany a warm feeling that we know as love.
Exhibiting self-love allows us to do these things for ourselves. It's the understanding that we need to take care of ourselves, similarly to how we might take care of the people we love.
Also, self-love is allowing others to take care of our needs.
With this understanding, we can say that self-love is also about how we talk ourselves into moving from negative to positive in our feelings for ourselves. And from negative to positive in how we choose to experience life.
The Difference Between Self-love And Self-care
The act of physically carrying out self-love, like treating ourselves to a massage or eating a healthy diet, is self-care.
Self-care is a subset of self-love and comprises the actions necessary to move ourselves to a self-love state, i.e., happiness, positivity, and love of life and ourselves.
The Trouble With Self-Love
The trouble with self-love is that we don't practice it nearly as much as we should. And what's worse, when we look at others, we think they are much happier with their lives than we are. We suffer the classic grass is greener syndrome, which depresses and demotivates us.
However, the reality is that we all struggle to build ourselves up for the day - especially when we need to look and feel our best. It takes work with many of us not managing at all, instead focussing on the negative aspects of daily life, work, money, health, and relationships.
Social media doesn't help either. As we peer into others' lives, we can't help but feel we're missing out or that the grass is greener on their side.
How To Love Yourself
Here at The Kewl Blog, we struggle with self-love too, and we see your troubles. No one has blessed us with abundant self-confidence, and our sense of worth reaches new lows often daily.
So we set off on our own "Love Yourself" crusade. We've talked a lot, prodded, researched, and interviewed some great minds to develop the seven self-love principles below.
Remember that the acts we need to undertake to practice self-love are called self-care, and you can find our self-care ideas and tips on the link here.
The Seven Principles Of Self Love
Here they are:
Principle 1 - Your Body Is Your Temple
This principle covers the requirement to exercise regularly and eat a healthy and nutritious diet.
You have only one body, and you need to look after it for the long and fulfilling life you deserve. Please treat it with respect, and for the miracle it is.
Read more:
Healthy Eating - How To Do It
We're not nutritionists, but we're full of common sense and can make rational decisions about what is healthy for us or not. We've spent a long time researching foods and eating behaviors because we're curious about eating healthy. We want to understand how to improve our eating habits and to feel good about our bodies. In short, we've decided to take responsibility for what we eat.
How To Be Healthy, Fit & Sexy
We adopt practical solutions to our health and fitness. We develop effective ways to maintain our bodies and to feel better about ourselves. It takes some effort but is achievable.
Principle 2 - Your Mind Is Your Strength
What we think becomes a reality. In life, we can choose to be positive or negative. We might think life has got us down, but understand this reality is one we have chosen. Think positively, and positive things will follow. Gain strength from positive thoughts.
Read more:
15 Unconventional Yet Effective Motivational Tips
Here you have it—fifteen proven tips to help you motivate yourself. Whether you're interested in changing careers, launching a new project, or want to start working out at home, we hope this set of advice will make things easier for you.
Bad Habits That Are Unproductive—And How To Quit Them
Recognizing your bad habits and looking for ways to change those into positive habits is the first step to leading a more healthy, productive life. If you make a bad habit of practicing any of the things we mentioned or more, try slowly implementing changes.
How To Create A Perfect Self-Love Sanctuary At Your Home
What better way to show some self-love than by creating a sanctuary in your home. Instead of allowing cabin fever to consume you, take a break from work, chores, and overthinking by creating a perfect self-love sanctuary at your home and do something nice for yourself.
Principle 3 - Believe In Yourself
You can do anything you want. All you need to do is honestly believe that you can. Learn how to motivate yourself. Apply consistency, determination, and grit in setting and reaching your goals. When you make decisions, stick to them, and follow-through. Understand that people won't show a similar belief in you. Disregard these views and stay steadfast in your chosen course. Never give up on your ideas and the things that you believe.
Read more
What Are Self-Esteem And Self-Respect And How Do I Improve Them
Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself and your abilities, while self-respect is all about your morals and boundaries. Both are integral parts of our internal value systems and essential for our day to day functioning, in relationships, and for our inner happiness.
10 Ways To Be Happier and More Confident In Everything You Do
We all struggle with insecurities, self-doubt, denial, and fear. It's human nature to experience these emotions every once in a while. However, when you learn how to overcome these negative emotions, you'll see your life is happier and healthier.
Be Cool
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Those words, courtesy of the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, ring more real than ever today.
The media saturates us with ideas about who and what we should be, what we should wear, how we should act, and what it means to be cool. When you strive for what others want, though, you lose yourself.
Principle 4 - Practice Gratitude, And Give More Than You Take.
Be grateful for what you have, no matter how small and insignificant you feel. And be generous in the things you do for others. Being grateful and giving your time and resources to others are fundamental acts of love, both for yourself and others. These acts will come back to reward you.
Read More - How Online Love Tarot Readings Can Help You Improve Your Love Life
Principle 5 - Make Good Habits
Turn your positive thoughts and actions into good habits so that they become a natural part of you. Repetition and practice will eventually create new behavioral patterns. Please make an effort to do this work, eliminate your bad habits, and replace them only with good habits.
Read more:
How to Write Positive Morning Affirmations for You
Morning is the perfect time to start your day with positive thoughts that will give you the energy you need for the rest of the day. A great way to do this is to write morning affirmations to motivate yourself and attract positive changes and habits to your life.
Principle 6 - Don't Let Your Past Define You
Understand that you are not perfect and that you will make mistakes. You might have made mistakes you are not proud of or hurt someone you love. But these things are now in the past for you. Learn from these mistakes and only allow positive thoughts to carry forward.
Principle 7 - Accept Your Love
Lastly, trust that you can and will love yourself if you practice the principles we note above. As you develop positive thoughts and habits, your past becomes filled with behavior you love about yourself.
Read more:
How Self-Love Improves Anxiety, Motivation, Sleep & Nutrition
Paying closer attention to what you need, what makes you feel good, and finding ways to love yourself for who you are, is the best way to improve levels of anxiety, motivation, sleep, and nutrition.
Embrace Your Natural Self
Almost every visual today, whether it's for a deodorant or a motorbike, features a woman that has a figure to die for, the perfect hair and makeup, and clothes that accentuate her features.
We've all been guilty wishing for similar vital statistics and sexy outfits. But take a moment to think – is this really what being 'beautiful' means?
Starting now, let's resolve to stay away from these social media-driven ideas of beauty and instead focus on embracing ourselves for who we are. And being beautiful in the real sense of the word.
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The Kewl Shop
The Kewl Shop is a blog. We write about all things lifestyle with a strong focus on relationships, self-love, beauty, fitness, and health. Important stuff that every modern woman or man needs to know.
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Editor: Charles Fitzgerald
