Self Love: Practical Steps to Become More Self-Loving
What is Self-Love?
The answer to this question seems obvious: it means you love yourself, right? You either do or you don’t. In American culture, love has a little checkbox next to it. You develop a relationship with someone until your feelings reach the level of “love”, and then you check the box and declare your feelings.
When you take this yes-or-no approach to loving yourself, it is easy to get stuck in self-criticism and rack up a list of reasons why you’re not ready to love yourself yet. You might feel like you need to make some improvements before you’re satisfied or you may think you will never be good enough to love yourself completely.
An alternative approach to self-love is to view love as an action instead of an emotion or judgment.
How to Start Loving Yourself
First, decide what it means to you to be loving toward a person. You might benefit from using a journal to list out people who are loving toward you and what behaviors they used to show that. For example: a parent who supported your interests by driving you to dance classes; a friend who stood up for you when you were being bullied; or a partner who noticed that you were feeling down and offered to comfort you. Take some time to do the reverse and list out people whom you love and which behaviors you used to be loving toward them. If you are struggling with this part, it’s okay to use your imagination or observations of others to fill in the blanks.
During this activity, you may have observed that loving someone goes beyond simply saying “I love you”. Loving behaviors can be gentle, supportive, compassionate, encouraging, and even protective. You may have also observed that the same people who love you might have also been hurtful to you at times and vice versa. The key takeaway here is that love does not require perfection.
The next step is to take an honest look at your own behaviors toward yourself. Do not expect perfection. Try to reserve judgment as you do this. In what areas of your life are you being loving toward yourself? In which areas could you use improvement? Start with whether or not your needs are being met. As a general guide, consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have a set of shared needs and desires. The bottom tier of the pyramid comprises basic survival needs. If these are not met, meeting the upper tiers can be significantly more difficult, etc…
After some reflection, the next step is to plan to take action. Choose a few self-loving behaviors that you would like to try. Be specific and realistic as you are planning. For example, you might want to take yourself on a vacation but lack the time off work or the funds to do that right now. Instead, you could plan a day trip somewhere new, visit a friend in another state to save money, or start a savings account for your travels. Here is a helpful worksheet about setting SMART goals.
After you try a new behavior, check in with yourself and see how you feel. It’s important to reflect on your expectations versus reality and to make adjustments. Ask yourself if your behavior contributed toward a long-term or short-term feeling of fulfillment? Was it worth the time and effort? What were the costs and benefits of this behavior? Adjust your strategy and try again.
Keep going. The most important thing you can do is be patient and keep showing up for yourself. If your loved one were struggling, you wouldn’t give up on them, so don’t give up on yourself. Learning to love yourself is a process that takes time and maintenance, but there are many personal rewards to putting in this effort: higher self-esteem, greater confidence, resilience, and hope. There are also interpersonal benefits that include greater compassion for others, decreased social anxiety, and increased confidence during social interactions.
When You Don’t Feel Ready to Love Yourself
Reading the words “self-love” might feel a little icky to you. If this is the case, please take a moment to consider, and maybe write down, your reaction to this idea. How would you describe this feeling? Is it anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, or disgust? Ask yourself where this feeling comes from. Who/what taught you to feel this way about self-love and about yourself? What is it that doesn’t allow you to love yourself or makes it feel wrong to love yourself?
If you are not ready to commit to being loving toward yourself, try this Pros & Cons Worksheet.
