Your Challenge Today:
Self-love
By Bernadette Kathryn, LMT, IHLC
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.
You really have to love yourself
to get anything done in this world.
~ Lucille Ball
Taking on the challenge of playing this game is an expression of Self-Love! We are not talking about narcissistic love, we are talking about true, self appreciation and respect. The kind of self-love that celebrates your personal power, gifts, talents and spirit.
- Self-love is powerful and progressive; it grows by behavior and actions that develop us.
- Self-love, self-care and self-respect are the cornerstones of creating a Living Fit Lifestyle.
- Self-love, appreciation and respect are all essential elements of creating a life and body that you can love too.
- Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, spiritual and emotional development.
When we act in ways that expand self-love in us:
- We begin to accept our imperfections, our weaknesses as well as our strengths
- We have less need to justify and defend our short-comings, no one is perfect … really!
- We have kindness for ourselves as human beings striving to find special meaning in our lives
- We are grounded in our life purpose and values, and assume gratification through our own achievements.
A Recipe for Self-Love
- Develop a Mindfulness Practice ~ When you know yourself, who you are, what you like, what you want, think and feel ~ you have the ability make choices that support your life in a healthy way. The better you know yourself, the quicker you become comfortable with your choices and commitments to your health, life, family and community. These commitments are a recipe for healthy self-love.
- Develop a commitment to your Needs more than Wants ~ When you love yourself in a healthy way, you can discern the difference from what is exciting to what you need to stay strong, centered, and moving toward your living fit lifestyle. By staying focused on what your true health needs, you strengthen your commitment to your health goals and turn away from habitual behavior patterns that get you into trouble, keep you stuck in the past, and lessen self-love.
- Practice the Art of Self Care – You begin to love yourself even more, when you take better care of your own basic physical, spiritual and emotional needs. People with a high level of self-love nourish themselves through healthy activities, such as wise nutrition choices, daily exercise, restorative sleep, intimacy, pleasure and healthy social interactions.
- Set healthy boundaries. You show the world your love when you set healthy limits and say no when you need to. Sometimes it is appropriate to say no to work, love, or invitations that deplete you or are not in alignment with your core values. Setting healthy boundaries is an art that will help you flourish when you own
- Protect yourself and your spirit. Bring the best people for you into your life, people that you respect and trust, people that you want to learn from. There isn’t enough time in life to waste on people who want to take away the glow in your heart that says, “I genuinely love myself and my life”. You will love and appreciate yourself more when you take the time to evaluate, edit and declutter your social life regularly. Save space in your calendar for people that love and support you and your happiness.
- Master the art of Forgiveness ~ especially for yourself! We are all humans, we all make mistakes, we are not perfect people and we can be hard on ourselves sometimes. When we take responsiblity for our actions we risk punishing ourselves for mistakes we make in the learning process. We have to accept our humanness, before we can truly love ourselves. Practice kindness and compassion with yourself when you make a mistake and remember, there are no failures ~ there are only lessons learned.
- Live with purpose! You will accept and love yourself more, no matter what is happening in your life, when you live with purpose and design. Your purpose doesn’t have to be crystal clear to you. If your intention is to live a meaningful and healthy life, you will make decisions that support this intention, and feel good about yourself when you succeed in this purpose. You will love yourself more if you see yourself accomplishing what you set out to do. You need to establish your living intentions, to do this.
Choose just one; maybe two of these self-love practices to work on, you will begin to accept and love yourself more. Imagine how much you’ll appreciate you when you exercise a few of these strategies to self-love. It is said that you can only love a person as much as you love yourself, I don’t know if that is true or not; but why chance it? By flexing your muscles of self-love, you will encourage others to express themselves in a loving way too. The more self-love you have for YOU, the better prepared you are for healthy friendships, family and working relationships. And, you will begin to attract people to you that support your living fit lifestyle!
For today I will focus more on my Needs than Wants. I have been giving in to my “wants'” a bit too much lately. I need to get into the gym 2X a week in addition to my daily swim. I need to cook more regularly for myself.
The other ingrediant in this recipe for self love that I NEED to focus on is self forgiveness. When I simply take right action to check out something for which I am feeling badly, it usually isn’t the big sin I think it is, and at least I can start a dialouge of forgiveness with myself and the other.
Aside from regular exercise and minful eating, investing in my health by getting regular treatment (2X weekly) from my ART docs is a manifestation of self love. Once in a while I find myself calculating the financial expense, but I stop myself and realize that my life has so much more value due to feeling better with their help!