How to love yourself (and your life) more!

How to love yourself (and your life) more!

Love is in the air?

It’s February! The time of year that you either get:

A – mushy about being loved up.

B – annoyed with all mushy people.

So who is the person that you love the most in all the world?

The answer really should be YOU!!!

Sadly lots of people feel they need to rely on other people to make them feel good or happy. But what happens when you are not with that special person or have people around you that make you feel good?

Maybe you are just unhappy or are hoping and ‘waiting’ for the right person to come along and find you. Or perhaps (like I used to once upon a time) you love to complain about someone that once made them feel so rubbish that you never want to be involved with a man/woman ever again.

However, whether you are loved up or not, all this does is tell us one thing……. that you alone are not responsible for your own happiness. That often, you need something or someone else outside of you to make you feel good, valued and see your self-worth.

The impact of looking outside of yourself.

The problem with looking to other people for how to feel about yourself is two things:

Firstly, what happens when you have people in your life that don’t make you feel good? I don’t necessarily mean that they make you feel bad even, just not good.

It means that you are constantly on the lookout for other things to determine how you should feel about yourself. People’s comments, your circumstances, the weather….. anything really. Most of the time people look to things that are completely out of their control and this means that your feelings about yourself will be completely out of control too. It can feel like a rollercoaster that goes anywhere from happiness to self-loathing in 0.2 seconds flat.

Secondly, even when you do have people that make you feel good, you are always expecting things to go wrong or you never quite believe what they say. You are uncomfortable with compliments or you believe that people are ‘just being nice’ and you probably STILL don’t like who you are or what you see in the mirror.

Why you are the most important person in your life.

When I talk to people about why you are the most important person in your own life. People find it a bit uncomfortable. They feel like it is a bad thing or that they will come across as ‘big headed’ or ‘blowing their own trumpet but this is not the case at all. In fact, often the showiest, loudest people are the ones that have the least confidence and have to work hardest to convince people that they are.

• People who take responsibility for their own happiness are in such a great position because they:

• Like who they are and are happy with themselves.

• They are positive (about themself and their life)

• They see the positives in their life.

• They don’t care what others say or think.

• They don’t have to rely on other people to make them feel good or know that they are doing well.

• They feel in control of their life.

• They measure themselves on effort, not success or failure and don’t compare themselves to others.

When you are happy with yourself and are responsible for your own happiness, you are much more likely to form healthy relationships with others too as you won’t be worried about them or the outcomes, because you trust that you will be okay regardless!

What can you do to love yourself more.

Start by listening to that voice inside your head and noticing how it talks when it is talking about you.

Is it helpful? Is it kind? Does it talk to you like it’s your best friend? … probably not.

It’s more likely that it’s mean, unhelpful and downright nasty at times.

So by listening to your self talk you can ask yourself how helpful or how true that thought is. Would you friends and family agree with that thought? Tell that thought to DO ONE and swap it for a nicer, more helpful thought instead. This takes a little time and practise but if you can work on it for a couple of weeks, that little devil on your shoulder will start to quieten down.

Secondly, look at the positives in your every day. I’m not talking about the great big whopping achievements. I’m talking about getting the hoovering down. Catching up with a friend. Paying a bill. Doing something fun.

You are probably so well practised at only seeing the things that are going wrong that it is no wonder that you feel rubbish sometimes. Look for every tiny positive, recognise why it was a positive and think about what it tells you about you!

Love yourself and you will love everything and everyone around you more too!

Loving yourself is not self centred, it is not arrogant, it is not selfish. It is probably one of the most important things you can do for yourself! And others around you will love you more for it too because you will be happier, more tolerant, less needy and much more confident!

So this February, make a promise to love yourself more. To talk to yourself kindly and be your own best friend! After all, you can be absolutely certain that the only person guaranteed to be in your life for you… is YOU!