Tips for Loving Yourself More Series Part 2

Since we were little, women have been told to strive for confidence. That assertiveness is the desired trait of a woman. She needs to be her own powerhouse, drawing the world to her. Expectations are placed upon us and those expectations turn into standards. Those standards created a world where we went from dreams of creating a beautiful and impactful future into molds we can never fit into. Women now live in a world where we are expected to love ourselves because no one else is going to do it for us.

We are living in times of trends such as self-love, self-care, love your body, body positivity. We see it every day. On our social media accounts, in magazines, on t-shirts, in the media. Now we are expected to just start loving ourselves, people plaster it everywhere so we should all just be able to jump on board, right?

What society is failing to do is follow through on their inspiration. You can inspire, give a kick-ass motivational speech, but telling people what they need to do without providing a way for them to get there isn’t serving anyone. It’s getting them started on a path and then abandoning them when they need you most.

That is why we’ve created this series, Tips for Loving Yourself More, where we share the steps that have been the most impactful for us on our journey to finding peace within our own skin.

*Please note: we recommend reading part one of our series, Tips for Loving Yourself More Part 1, first.

Here are our tips for loving yourself more continued…

1. Fake it ’til you hate it.

People’s go-to advice for others is fake it ’til you make it and it is the worst rule to live your life by. However, if you’re trying to figure out how to love yourself, then faking it is the perfect way to find out how much you do love about yourself already. 

Be someone else for a day and you’ll realize you love being you more than you thought.

Go ahead, spend a day or a week trying to be that person you wish you were so much, wake up every day and fake that you are happy, that you love yourself, that you’re rich, that you’re skinny, that you’re popular. See how long you last. At one point you are going to get exhausted. Maybe even become a little miserable.

Why?

Because you and I both know that being yourself is who you are, it is what comes naturally to you. You feel more comfortable being yourself because it takes less work. Being someone else isn’t what you really want, you want to be yourself and you want to be loved just the way you are. If you take time to be someone else you will soon see all the things you don’t really love about that life and be reminded of all the things you love about your life and who you are now. 

Sometimes we just need clarity and faking it ’til you hate it can show us just how much we appreciate ourselves more than we thought. 

2. Know your level of “enough” and your level of success. (& that it is okay to want what you want and not what others want).

Struggling to know your purpose and who you are along with a negative body image are some of the main reasons why we all struggle to love ourselves, but there is one other main root issue and that is we never feel we are enough.

Once you know who you are, find peace with your body, and have uncovered pieces of what you already love about yourself, you are ready to work towards a place where you believe yourself when you say, ‘you are enough.’ 

The reason we never feel like we are enough is that we haven’t defined what our enough is.

There is no cap to the level we want to reach, we’ve now created something that is never attainable. Take the time to decide what is enough for you, in life, in your career, in your body image. Your enough should be a level your comfortable with, that will bring you joy, and most importantly is practical. 

Once you’ve decided what will be enough for you to find peace and make you happy, let that actually be enough for you. Lastly, let YOUR enough, be enough for you. 

3. Feed your mind with real, raw, truths.

There is so much noise we face every day in this world, but none of it will be as impactful as speaking to yourself with your own voice. You know yourself better than anyone else, speak to yourself with the words you know will feel right for you.

You can feed yourself with thoughts of whatever you want, but you will be able to tell the difference between a lie and a truth, don’t try to fool yourself into thinking and being something that is someone else way of speaking and doing things…they won’t work for you.

Take the knowledge you are provided, but then use it in your own way because then you will be feeding yourself with truth and empowerment that comes from you… and that is where you will make the strongest positive changes with yourself. 

Sometimes, though, we feed ourselves with negativity and with that it can be easy to spiral things downhill quickly. This is where learning how to stop the negative thoughts with true and realistic statements to replace negativity with sensibility. 

For example, one of the thoughts we shared, in the beginning, was, “Nothing is working for me, I will never be able to love myself like everyone else can.” This is a false statement. It is impossible to go your entire life without ever loving yourself. You will love yourself. You will find that peace with yourself. It will come and go throughout your life. Some moments you will love yourself and other times you will struggle, but you will never be in the “hate” for forever.

Being able to feed yourself with these truths will help you slowly begin to replace negative thoughts and soon diminish some of their power over you. Start with feeding your mind and learning what truths you can remind yourself when you begin to go down that ugly spiral.

4. Overcome The Comparison Game

Lastly, there is one other root issue that comes up when trying to find peace with yourself and your body is the cold hard ugly game of comparison. We are all guilty of comparing ourselves to others, wishing we had what they had. Thinking we would be happier if we looked like them and had the life they live. Working on overcoming comparison takes steps just like we stated in this article and you read our steps to combating comparison in our post, Overcoming The Comparison Game. 

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We all know loving yourself is like building a relationship between you and your body, it requires a lot of work. Sometimes it even feels impossible or it just isn’t working for you.

Loving yourself can be an impossible mission if you don’t know what you can do. If you don’t have the right tools or steps that make sense for you and your life, you can find yourself stuck in an uphill battle.

We hope these steps will be the game changer you need to start your journey to self-love. Let these steps guide you into a healthier mindset to finding peace and working through those difficult times when you don’t love what you see in the mirror. 

More importantly, if you’re looking for more support join us and our community where women just like you are working towards loving themselves more and encouraging each other along the way.