Self-love is more than just self-care. It’s about accepting yourself on every level and every layer: the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. By digging deep and doing this work, you can build a stronger and more loving relationship with yourself and move toward a deeper level of self-love and acceptance.
So how do you build a healthy, strong, and loving relationship with yourself?
Physical Layer
Your body is always communicating with you through your inner feelings or intuition, so stop ignoring it. Whether your body is telling you to rest and sleep, to give it more nourishing and healthy foods, or that a situation or person doesn’t feel “quite right,” listen to your inner-self, acknowledge it, and if possible, act on that.
Here, you choose to take care of yourself physically by allowing yourself to:
- Get enough sleep
- Eat a healthy diet and nourish your body
- Exercise
- Be mindful of who and what you spend time on
- Allow yourself to have a healthy amount of rest and play
Emotional layer
On the emotional level, the important work here is to:
- Embrace pain, failures, mistakes, and moments of doubt that you experience. There is a reason why we go through things in life—it is our job to find the lesson. Sometimes our challenges make us stronger.
- Get really honest with yourself about how you feel, whatever the feelings, without judging or labeling them as good or bad.
- Forgive yourself for your past.
- Embrace all emotions and know that they come and go and that they are all temporary.
It is completely OK for you to go through difficult times and feel painful emotions in life. It is part of the human experience and the duality that goes with it. You can’t be happy all the time. There will be ups and downs, highs and lows. It is healthier for you and for your growth to face what’s going on inside.
Mental Layer
Know that your mind is a tool and that you can choose your thoughts to be more loving and supportive. Work on:
- Observe your thoughts and know you are not them.
- Train your mind to stop judging yourself, to stop focusing on what you think is wrong with you or lacking, to stop the need to always fix yourself, and to stop comparing yourself to others.
- Instead, be grateful for your blessings, what you have, and your unique qualities.
- Start meditating (even for just 5-10 minutes a day). Meditation is a powerful tool that can allow you to witness your thoughts without judging them.
Spiritual Layer
When you move into the spiritual level, you will want to:
- Connect to your heart, to your true self and your intuition, and to start living from that space.
- Connect to a higher source, whether you call it gratitude, god, the universe, life, love—it doesn’t matter, but learn to trust in it and surrender to it.
- Understand that your soul has chosen to come into your body exactly as it is and has chosen most of your life circumstances for you to learn and to grow. Seek the lesson in your experiences.
