How can we love ourselves? Can we imagine a life in which we appreciate and congratulate ourselves? A life in which we feel good enough and good enough. Unfortunately, we haven’t learned to love ourselves. We’ve learned to judge and criticize ourselves. Here are 5 tips for finally loving yourself.

1 – Loving yourself is the starting point for everything

We can’t give what we don’t have. In other words, we can’t give love if we don’t have it. We cannot give benevolence, if we lack it.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.

This is what Gandhi told us. What does it mean? If we want to find love in others, we must first find it in ourselves. If we want to give love to others, we must first give love to ourselves.

In other words, loving ourselves is the starting point for everything.

To love ourselves in order to love others.

“You can give nothing but the contents of your heart, and you can attract nothing but what you offer to others.”

2 – Loving ourselves is our responsibility

From an early age, we learned to do things by means of a punishment-reward system. When we did the right thing, we were rewarded, and when we didn’t, we were punished.

In other words, we didn’t learn to be loved for who we were, but rather for what we did.

Yes, we learned to be loved conditionally.

Yet everything in us – our heart, our body, our soul – craves love. It needs it.

That’s why we can no longer afford to expect others to love us because we do this or that.

So, the only love truly within our reach is our own.

In other words, learning to love ourselves is our responsibility.

Let’s stop expecting attention, compliments and encouragement from others. Let’s give them to ourselves instead.

3 – Talk to each other like friends

How can we love ourselves? By loving yourself as a friend.

What is loving yourself as a friend? It’s being sufficiently :

demanding enough of yourself to move forward.
present to listen to and respect yourself.
tolerant to accept ourselves as we are, with our imperfections and failings.
In fact, it’s being a friend to ourselves.

In concrete terms, how do you talk to yourself as if you were a friend?

We TAKE the time! When we’re feeling down, frustrated, stressed or sad, we sit down for 5 minutes and talk to each other:

How do I feel?
What’s going on?
What do I need?
What do I need?
What can I do to feel better?
What’s most important to me right now?
What is my intention, my goal?
I’d like to add that prevention is better than cure. In fact, we can avoid waiting for things to go wrong before doing something good for ourselves. For example, we can get into the habit of talking to ourselves for 5 minutes every day, or writing in a journal.

We can ask ourselves these questions:

What happened to me today? What’s pleasant, what’s not so pleasant?
What did I learn, what did I like?

4 – Loving yourself: stop listening to your inner judge

How can you love yourself? By replacing condemnation with benevolent judgment!

We’ve all noticed how harshly we judge ourselves: “I’m too lame, too fat, too stupid, too skinny…”.

What if we learned to judge ourselves in a benevolent way?

From now on, when we have something to say to each other, we’ll have to follow this charter (laughs):

Differentiate between what really happened and what we imagine happened.
Don’t jump to conclusions
Don’t exaggerate. In other words, words like “very, too, a lot” are forbidden.
Don’t generalize. Words like “always, all the time, never” are also forbidden.
Be specific! Example: Last night, when I said or did this, I acted badly and I regret it.
Let’s be constructive! Example: Next time, I’ll do or say this instead.
This exercise can completely change our lives, because if we stop judging ourselves harshly, we’ll stop judging others. Our relationships will be all the better for it.

On the other hand, judging ourselves kindly won’t happen overnight. It will take time and practice. Our “talking to yourself as if you were a friend” session will enable us to practice day by day.

So, how can we love ourselves? By replacing harsh judgments with kind judgments. By replacing guilt with words of encouragement.

5 – Do small things, often!

Indeed, to love ourselves, it’s essential to regularly do things that make us proud of ourselves.

In fact, we all know deep down what we want and need. But our little inner voice pushes us to doubt ourselves, to fear change and therefore to do nothing.

Yet I think there’s no better way to love and honor ourselves than to follow our intuition and do what we feel like doing. Despite fear and doubt.

What’s more, everyday actions such as going to work, cleaning, cooking… are all reasons to congratulate ourselves. Indeed, by doing these small things we take care of ourselves and can be proud of ourselves.

So how can we love ourselves? By realizing that every little thing we do on a daily basis is a way of taking care of and loving ourselves.

How can we become aware of this? Every evening, we can take a few moments to congratulate ourselves on 3 things we’re proud of.

Find out more:

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover Being unhappy: My 5 tips for finding your way back to happiness
Discover 7 tips for guilt-free living for yourself

I recommend this inspiring book:

Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr

I read this book and never thought I’d like it so much… But when I finished it, I ordered three more copies for friends, because its poetic use of language is something to be appreciated, pondered and perhaps even emphasized.

It’s a story of healing and the discovery of a strength beyond oneself. But more than that, it’s a story of forgiveness. Forgiving her mother and forgiving herself. She begins the book with her career as a writer and early poet, her love affair with her husband and drinking. She writes with crystal clarity and memory of situations and conversations that, for most of us, have long since disappeared into the past. Reflecting on her struggles with alcoholism and her journey toward self-love.
What an incredible read!

Thank you very much for reading this article.

If you liked it, let me know in the comments.

Take care of yourself