How to Practice Self Love: 12 Effective Tips

If there is one person who will be with you at all your highs and lows, it’s you, and only you. So why hate that person itself?

Well, this topic is personal for me too, as a lot of lows in my life taught me how to be strong throughout, but whose life does not have any problems right? Alas, we only have one life, don’t we? So, let’s make it beautiful!

Loving yourself could also be a requirement in situations you cannot take hold over. Do you have a fear of facing the world? How to practice self-love? Grab a cup of coffee and skim thoroughly the practice of self-love below!

How to Practice Self-Love?

What is self-love? It means to love ourselves, even when we find ourselves in difficult situations, to take care of our own needs and happiness. Practicing self-love can push out low self-esteem and make you believe in yourself.

While some may think that self-love is mainly about reading books or going out shopping, for others, it is more about psychological and mental well-being.

1. Trusting Yourself

In life, there are infinite obstacles and challenges which may come down to serious decision-making. The space we create outside us depends on the decisions we make. Lack of trust in ourselves in those moments can be challenging, but harnessing the power of trusting ourselves is a gift.

Reach out to people who are close to you. Nothing can stop you from believing in yourself.

How to Trust Yourself?

Accepting yourself is the first bold move, the world around you will appreciate it when you are confident about yourself.

Don’t worry about losing and taking steps backwards instead of embracing failure and trying to do better. You are your own home, so learn from everything you do.

Secondly, take your own decisions, no one can take charge of your life but you.

Failed once? Not a problem. Trying is the best way to discover the actual potential one possesses.

Be faithful to your choice. Try not to live in the past and be full of regrets, you have to take lessons from your failures.

Thirdly, stop pleasing people unnecessarily who want you to follow their habits and live up to their standards. Don’t feel bad if anyone criticizes your decision-making skills. We all are different in perspectives and everyone should respect that.

2. Follow Your Dreams

Choose the right path for you and follow it until you get to its endpoint. Be patient. Not everyone makes progress in one day.

Remember, dreams are ways to the future and one should take them seriously to avoid drawbacks. It does not have to be related to degrees and education. People often go for co-curricular activities and they excel in them. Sports, fine arts, and blogging are a few of the popular examples.

3. Love Yourself

Do you love yourself? Maybe you do, but what about the times when you feel regret about past circumstances or pick up a fight with someone you love?

Dealing with insecurities can cause you to dislike yourself. Loving yourself can bring self-worth and self-confidence. Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you raise your confidence in yourself and know how to practice self-love.

• Forgive Yourself

Start to look back on your past decisions in a view that will help you move on. We all make mistakes. They are a part of our lives, but we must learn to admit it and learn from it.

We break hearts, fail in exams, and disappoint our parents in ways we did not mean to. That doesn’t make us bad people.

Negative thoughts surround our mind but the best way to tackle it is by just being positive about everything we do.

• Have Fun

Giving time to yourself is always good. Going out shopping at weekends or on a getaway ride, meeting old friends or simply enjoying your own company with a few drinks at your place.

Mostly, do things which make you feel uplifted and confident. Like going on dates or cinema.

• Search For New Hobbies

Remember that it is not late to learn a hobby right from the basics. It is a great move to try something that you never thought you will, or were scared of.

Maybe try to go on solo trips, learn foreign languages, or maybe dance, going for night walks is one of my hobbies.

Bungee jumping, rafting, and trekking are great choices to get away from fear and gain confidence in yourself. Give yourself a chance and try it out.

• Learn to Take Care of Yourself

By taking care of yourself, you can learn to love yourself. Physical activities are very much important to one’s mental and physical self.

Exercise can boost your energy levels and be a serious stress buster. It doesn’t have to include going to the gym and working out excessively. Simple exercises like a walk in the morning or yoga can help build us up mentally.

A proper routine that includes daily exercises will help you build yourself mentally and physically fit.

• Travel Once in a While

Take a break from work and travel on your own or with your buddies. Travelling helps in changing everyday work fatigue, as no one wants a monotonous life, right?

You will get to interact with new people, and who knows, maybe you will find a good friend!

A trip to the hills or the seaside may give a treat to your eyes. Here are a few places where you can take yourself on weekends.

4. Accepting Emotional State

We are not constantly happy and optimistic about everything in life. In times like these, we must acknowledge the state of mind and understand the emotion we are feeling.

It’s okay to have a bad day.

But lingering on it and not recognizing the root cause of this state is not very healthy, you must also never act like you are fine when you are not. Masking your emotions and putting up a fake front is not fair to you.

Acknowledge the fact that you are having a bad day. It will help you to talk and feel freely about yourself every single day. This could be the best way to know how to practice self-love.

5. Give Time to Yourself

It is good to socialize when you are not having a good day. A lot of people stretch their routines with parties or concerts to feel motivated, but it is also okay to give yourself time to feel better.

That is fine, but your inner self cannot get rid of the situations you are facing. Sometimes activities may be exhausting, and one cannot get over things that are dragging them down.

It is not selfish if you take out some time for yourself, take it because you deserve it.

6. Quit Comparing Yourself

Comparing yourself with others can kill the love for yourself. Do you feel good when you compare yourself? No one does, rather it drags us down to our weaknesses.

Don’t feel bad about someone else’s success. Hold on, your sweet time will come soon.

We often find our flaws and emphasize them to a level where we don’t feel ourselves anymore. Spend your time with yourself and appreciate the little and big things you have.

7. Get Over Past Traumas

We all have had some bad experiences in the past. Some go through work pressure, relationship issues, harassment, family problems and many more. Sometimes thinking about events or people could be difficult and can hurt our mental state.

Give time to yourself, talk it with someone you trust, or get professional help. We all have just one life. We don’t want to live a life of regrets and depression, correct?

Getting over past traumas can be helpful to start over and move you along on your self-love journey.

8. Choose the Right People

Give access to your heart only to the right people. We all have come across “friends” who are not friends. A lot of people will cross paths with you, don’t forget to test them to see whether they are your actual friends or not.

Sometimes people can hide their true selves and pretend to be someone else. Choose people who are not judgmental, also, don’t feel insecure about yourself around them.

Some people may not be a good match for you and often get jealous of other people’s happiness. Get rid of them.

Also, anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of you can be left alone. Don’t beg them to stay!

9. Learn More as an Advancement

How to practice self-love tips are very common and well discussed. And that’s good because we are constantly reminded that loving ourselves is important.

It helps us know and grow to become more focused and accept ourselves. This new trend helped in research and practices of how we can tackle depression and loneliness.

Reading new books, and news articles, researching more about self-care, and guidance can be helpful. Doing a lot of media consumption can help cope with it.

There are a lot of YouTube videos where people open up about situations they are going through and how they are recovering. Even movies are made for motivational purposes. Here are 21 Hollywood movies that can help you understand better how to practice self-love.

10. Get Some Rest

Working all day and keeping yourself busy is a smart move. But what about your body? Our body needs around 7-8 hours of sleep, which can be challenging sometimes, especially when you are having a tough day.

Sleep is very much needed to get you freshened up. Not getting enough sleep can be noticeable in oneself. It is important to keep up with the mental and physical self to develop self-love. Creating a routine can be helpful.

11. Eating a Healthy Diet

Having good food automatically makes us feel good. Having a balanced yet tasty diet is a must when you are going through tough times. Also, eating habits should include equal intervals between your meals.

Do not skip meals as it will only make you weaker, and you will experience fatigue and frequent blackouts. You can sometimes treat yourself to junk, spicy foods, and a couple of drinks. It is not a bad thing to go out of your diet schedule sometimes.

12. Talk to Yourself

Self-talk can be a huge part of the journey of how to practice self-love. We all have unsaid words or emotions in our heads. Pouring them out could be a very helpful decision.

Self-talk is something we do unconsciously through thoughts and processes. Sometimes it can turn out to be negative, which can give rise to doubts and judgements.

In such a scenario, ask yourself about the positive sides of you and things you like to do and about the things you are proud of. The reason why it is helpful is to catch yourself and stop consciously when you are engaging in negative thoughts.

Conclusion

Before concluding this topic of how to practice self-love, I would like to summarize what we all know until now about self-love.

Self-love is all about feeling happy when the world feels like falling onto you. It could be serious sometimes and people need to seek professional help in such cases.

A bit of narcissism isn’t bad, but it should be with you rather than letting hundreds of people know about it. Caring about ourselves mentally, physically and emotionally in a way is how to practice self-love.

Start with trusting yourself and take your own decisions. It is your life and you are responsible for everything that will follow your decisions.

Choose the right path for yourself and hold on to it, making progress can be slow but not worthless. Next is loving yourself, this is important to know how to practice self-love. Mistakes are meant to be made, so just take time out to heal and take care of yourself.

And most importantly, the people you choose to stay with should be non-toxic and should not let you down by any means.

Last Updated on July 29, 2024 by Sathi Chakraborty, MSc Biology