7 Different Ways To Practice Self Love.

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Ahhh, Valentine’s Day. The day when single women put up extra selfies with hash tags #lovethesinglelife, when double as much douchebags go out to score (because some of the women in clubs are served up with an extra serving of desperation) and everyone in a relationship needs to be all cutesy and buy each other fluffy stuff.

…Can you tell how much I don’t give a shit?

What I want for Valentine’s Day is women having a healthy and happy relationship with themselves. So I’m writing this semi-Valentine’s Day post not so much because of the rose petals, moonlight and serenades, but because of self love.

Self love doesn’t mean you have to navigate through life in a pink bubble, that you have to buy yourself a million pair of shoes or that you can never allow anything negative to enter your mind. Although I’m not gonna stop you if those are the types of things YOU want to do in the name of self love.

Self love, real self love? Comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And take it from me, you can be a snarky piece of shit and still love the absolute fuck out of yourself.

Here are 7 ways to practice self love.

1 SIT STILL AND APPRECIATE YOUR SOUL Take a second. Sit still. Take a breath. And take a moment to really connect and appreciate with the core of your being.

Appreciate not what you have, what you do, who you’re with or what other awesome bullshit you have in your Twitter profile, your LinkedIn page or your Instagram pictures, but what is inside of you. That life, that energy, that soul, however you want to call it. Appreciate that.

2 CALL YOURSELF ON YOUR OWN SHIT Self acceptance is wonderful, and works best when you combine it with an honest look at yourself. Learning to call yourself out when necessary is a very valuable asset in radical self love.

So be honest. Are you spending too much time obsessing over your relationship? Are you eating too much fried food? Are you letting your perfectionism getting the best of you? Are you slacking off at work, or are you working too hard? Are you being too negative?

Be honest with yourself. Whatever you want to do with the truth is up to you: You can just accept and embrace it, or if it’s unacceptable you can start working on it.

3 ASK YOURSELF “WHAT AM I BORED OF?” I love Alexandra Franzen’s post about asking yourself what you’re bored of (click here to read it) It makes you question your routines and your regular activities, and helps you take action on ridding yourself of what you’re done with right now.

So…what are you bored of? Staying in, or going out? Traveling or staying home? Your work out regimen or staying on the couch most nights? Reading shitty blogs, or watching Cats on Youtube? The people around you?

Answer this question for yourself, and decide what to do with the answer.

4 HAVE A DECENT DIALOGUE WITH YOUR CRITICS I don’t always like myself, but I’ve managed to create a dialogue with my inner critics that helps me stay in touch with self love. This helps, because it makes my different moods, mindsets and thoughts work together instead of against eachother.

So when I don’t like something I’ve done, I’m like “Okay, can we do something about it? Yes? Great. No? Okay, let’s obsess about it for 10 more minutes and then move on.”

5 BORROW MY MANTRA A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch, surrounded by pillows and blankets, probably doing weird stuff on my computer, feeling super content for no particular reason. That was nice in itself, because it had been a while.

And suddenly I thought: “Man. I’m basically in this love affair with myself. How lovely. Everything else is just a bonus.”

If my previous statement doesn’t make you think I’m a narcissistic asshole (which I totally am, but I know how to work it) and if you want in on having a love affair with yourself, borrow this mantra. Every time I think it, I feel content and chilled out about everything. I hope it makes you feel the same way.

6 TAKE A MOMENT TO THINK OF YOUR OWN DEFINITION SELF LOVE I follow Gala Darling on Facebook and she puts up a few definitions of self love every week. Come up with your own.

7 MAKE THE DAY A GIFT TO YOURSELF  You can do this in two different ways.

It can be an Indulge Day where you chill and sleep and generally just do as you please. It can also be a Self Help Day, where you give yourself extremely healthy food, a good work-out, some hours to read or study, an early night in or a night with your best friend to talk. The activities of that Self Help Day are gifts that give on giving: The positive effects of what you give yourself that day may work well into the next days, weeks or even months.

And as always, I believe you know best what the best ways to practice self love are for yourself. So do whatever is good for you, your soul and your self love.

I personally have grabbed my Love&Sequins to do some rereading: Gala‘s 12th Chapter ‘What I Know For Sure’ is my favorite. Today I’m going to take it easy and take good care of myself, spend some time relaxing, before my girlfriends are coming over for cocktails.  I have a date with Manfriend planned tomorrow, but tonight we’re both getting drunk with our friends on Valentine’s Day. That’s good for the soul too.

So from me to you, Happy Valentine’s Day, babies.

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7 comments

  1. Yes you can! Valentijnsdag doet mij ook niets, niet nu ik vrijgezel ben, ook niet al die jaren toen ik een relatie had. Je self love lijstje is perfect, goed voor elke dag! En vandaag, deze oh zo mooie Valentijnsdag – oh nee vrijdag – ga ik doen waar ik zin in heb: in m’n sweatpants, bril op en haar in een knoet koken voor een cateringopdrachtje, natuurlijk luid meezingend met een muziekje op en vanavond met fudge en een grote kop thee op de bank/in bed een filmpje kijken. Fijn zo’n dag!

  2. LOVE this, great article! I really don’t like Valentine’s Day at all, and neither does my boyfriend really. It’s nice to have a lovely evening together but it just feels so forced! Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about self love and what I do every day that actively makes me happy or unhappy, and this really helps. Thanks 🙂 xxxx

  3. I love you realness blog. I just got out of an emotional and physical abusive relationship. I kept running back to manipulation, just to find when I got there, I was too good to deserve that. I had to figure out what it was that kept me going back. It all boiled down to self love and it was apparent I had little of it. I had to have some if when I got back realized that I knew in my heart that I was a good person and that this wasn’t love. It took a lot of soul searching and contentment of my self to get me through it. Sometimes its just owning your story, standing up and saying… When I love I love hard but that doesn’t mean that I deserve to be treated anything less than amazing. Thanks again for your wonderful forwardness on real ass issues. Women need more of that in their lives.