Tag Archives: self love

11 Easy Things You Can Do That Prove You Love Yourself

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By Books Author Denise Turney

person holding golden love balloon
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Prove you love yourself. You know it’s time you did this. But how do you know you’re loving yourself, even now? How do you really know?

Think about it. If you were asked to list signs of having a cold, what would you list? Scratchy throat, stuffy nose, cough and tiredness? What if you were asked to list symptoms of being excited? Would any of these appear on your list – alertness, curiosity, rapid heartbeat, happiness and feeling alive?

Exploring Unconditional Love

Finally, what if you were asked to create a list of signs that prove you’re loved? If someone found your list, what would they find? Would they find words like warmth, kindness, appreciation, acceptance, realized value, welcomed, desired, cared for, connection, safety and trust?

What’s on that list reveals what think love is.

When is the last time you gifted yourself with what’s on your list? Ask yourself, when is the last time you made yourself feel loved. This is a time when you (you alone) treated yourself in a way that caused you to feel unquestionably loved.

Prove You Love Yourself as an Early Start

Confession. When I was younger, I thought self-love was selfish. Back then, I thought the Creator put me in the world to love everyone else except myself. Guess that’s why I sometimes felt like love was a risk, a risky chance that might or might not yield the results I was seeking.

Now it makes perfect sense to me. The entire time I was committed to loving everyone except myself (again thinking that loving yourself was a selfish and negative act to engage in), I was waiting for someone else to love me. Each time I believed that I had loved someone else, sacrificed for someone else, I expected to receive love.

When that didn’t happen (and looking back, it seems like it didn’t happen a lot), I felt disappointed. Love seemed like a trick to me. Or, as Amy Winehouse sang, it was as if “Love Is A Losing Game”. Fortunately, I didn’t give up on love.

People Who Help Your Prove You Love Yourself

Do you believe in love? Is love powerful, weak, necessary, real or unreal to you? Did you become familiar with love during your childhood? Hopefully, your parents, extended family and friends gave you love. It is my trust that the people circling you as you grew up demonstrated love for you. Even more, I trust that those people poured love into you, making it easy for you to realize that you have value.

Whether or not that happened, you have to work to love yourself. You have to prove you love yourself. And you have to prove it throughout the day.

Yet, life gets busy. Before you know it, you’re telling yourself that you don’t have time to rest. You start to believe that sacrificing your peace and joy for a relationship, a job, a belief is best. Even more, you might convince yourself that you just don’t have time to do what it takes to make yourself feel loved. That’s why breaking big impact actions into small steps helps.

11 Easy Self Love and Self Care Acts

Here are 11 easy things you can do to feel loved. They’re simple acts that can have a long, powerful and lasting impact. Add these to your daily routine and see if you don’t start to feel better, see if you don’t start to feel more loved.

  1. Listen to a song that causes you to feel hopeful, happy.
  2. Sit still for five minutes as soon as you awaken. Do the same five minutes before you drift into sleep at night. These are easy self-love and self-care actions. After a while you might decide to increase the time to 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night.
  3. Write yourself a love letter. This love letter doesn’t have to be long. The aim is to tell yourself, to demonstrate to yourself, how much you truly do love you.
  4. Breathe deeply for 60 seconds. As a tip, you could use a virtual timer to sit still, sit quiet and breathe for 60 seconds. Should this sound like too much time, start smaller. Start breathing deeply for 30 seconds and then work your way up to 60 seconds.
  5. Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself three things that you appreciate about yourself today, right now. Pay attention to how you feel as you do this. Notice if there’s an area where you find yourself struggling to believe something good about you. (Hint: You’re awesome!)
  6. Drink fresh water each day. Also, eat a healthy diet.
  7. Exercise daily – moving your body in healthy ways is an act of self-love.
  8. Get outdoors and enjoy a safe walk in nature. Stay outdoors for 45 minutes. This simple act can improve your mood, mental focus and physical well-being.
  9. Take one day a week to rest. Instead of working, do fun, relaxing things that you enjoy.
  10. Dance to a song that you love once a day. Not only is this fun, it’s great exercise.
  11. Open up to loving relationships. Say good-bye to people who constantly criticize, belittle and abuse you.

Whether you give love to someone else or to yourself, it is from within you that love flows. To feel empowered and confident enough to be who you really are, prove that you love yourself. Go beyond simply saying that you love yourself. Prove it.

How to Practice Self-Love in Less than 5 Minutes

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Flower Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Christian Ferrer

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

Self-love offers the assurance that you are always loved and are always lovable. When it comes to loving yourself, there are options, choices that cause you to receive and experience peace, joy and dare say — love. To get the most out of these options, start appreciating yourself. For example, the more patient you are with yourself, the more eager you become to exit abusive relationships – be they abusive romantic, social, religious or career relationships.

Loving You Offers Enormous Rewards

In fact, it’s hard to stay in unloving relationships when you know that you deserve love and you know that you are lovable. Beliefs about your value will shift, and like the Red Sea, you will part from what no longer aligns with how you perceive yourself. Additionally, self-love gifts you with the confidence to connect with people whose presence centers you in joy and peace.

Also, self-love builds inner trust. Once you start trusting yourself, that still small voice seems to get louder, clearer. That’s when you become aware of guidance directing you through challenges. If you’re looking to learn to love yourself, here are 11 simple steps.

Self-Love Practices

On the other hand, if you’ve made self-love part of your life and are committed to the practice, the idea that loving yourself can help you design amazing experiences isn’t farfetched. Following are ways to practice self-love in less than 5 minutes:

  • Start the day with a thought, a word and an emotion of appreciation. For example, you could wake with a “Thank You” followed by 10 seconds of silence.
  • Pray for what you want (also take smart actions). Prayer may well be a sign that you believe you are cared for enough to have your request be heard and answered.
  • Meditate for 2 to 14 minutes a day. As an example, you could sit still for 3 minutes at night before you retire to bed.
  • Eat and drink a healthy diet of fresh water, non-GMO fruit and vegetables, etc.

More Quick Self-Love Practices

  • Get outside and enjoy a walk, bike ride, jog or swim. Simply get outdoors and enjoy nature as you move your body.
  • Speak kindly to yourself throughout the day. For instance, you could stand naked in front of a long mirror and say, “I love you” to yourself before you dress in the morning. And you could do the same at night.
  • Connect with people you trust, people who are kind, caring and loving to not only you but others as well.
  • Engage in three or more activities that cause you to feel peace and joy.

Love Pour Over Me Support

You can never start self-love practices too soon. Patience is one of the greatest of the self-love practices. Yes. Despite your best intentions, you’re going to make mistakes. But you cannot make a mistake that cannot be corrected. So, keep advancing on your amazing journey. Practice self-love as Raymond Clarke, the major character in the book Love Pour Over Me, learns that he too must.

I encourage you to get a copy of the fictional story, Love Pour Over Me to witness the twists and turns, the highs and lows and the challenges and victories that Raymond experiences. Perhaps you will find encouragement, inspiration, motivation and support through reading Raymond’s story — support to continue (or start) loving yourself each and every day — at all times.

Motivation Traps – Dream Chasers Be Careful

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By Books Author Denise Turney

Dream chasers are believers. They are steadfast in their hope that they will attain their deepest desires and reach their most sought-after goals. At the worst, they doubt that they will ever do what they keep striving to complete. Is this you? Does this sound like you? Are you a dream chaser?

Wikimedia Commons, Picture by Benh LIEU SONG

Dream chasers turn away from facts

Do you run away from facts when weeks, months, maybe years have passed, and you still haven’t met one significant goal? And these are goals that you set for yourself. I’m not talking about goals your parents, friends or older siblings set for you, whether they pushed you toward those plans directly or indirectly.

Examples of facts include bathroom scale readings, health screening results, book sales, time spent with friends, depth of family relationships, athletic performance, late bills and money debt. So, let’s say that you want to lose 20 pounds within three months.

If you’re a dream chaser, you might get a fitness watch, track your daily steps and trade soda in for water. That’s the good part. On the flip side, you might start munching on potato chips, eating more bread and snacking on pizza on weekends.

It’s time to face facts dream chasers

Result is that, despite how many times you tell yourself and others that “you’re trying to lose weight”, you either go back and forth between losing and gaining weight or you don’t ever lose even five pounds. If you’re a dream chaser, the fact that you haven’t lost five pounds in 10 years might not be enough to stop you from swearing that you’re really serious about losing weight.

This is called self-deception. Hope to move beyond just being among the dream chasers? Pay attention to the facts. Track your progress. Create a spreadsheet and list specific actions that you take to reach your goals. Each month, list the results that your actions produced.

Open yourself to changing your actions as needed. Big businesses do this. It helps to determine which businesses survive and thrive and which businesses fold. It might sound hard; but facing facts could save you years of striving and exerting energy that will never get you what you want. Ever.

Are you another Raymond Clarke?

This is a critical point where you may have a lot in common with a guy named Raymond Clarke. Raymond spent the majority of his childhood trying to fit in. For Raymond, it started at home with his alcoholic father.

No longer able to stomach anymore of his father’s disapproval, Raymond started telling himself that his father wasn’t really angry. He did this despite the fact that his father treated him with an unrelenting meanness.

There are downsides if you lie to yourself

That’s when Raymond learned to lie to himself.

What happened to cause you to think that self-deception or chasing dreams (and never catching them) was the answer? How did you come to perceive lying to yourself as a better alternative than facts?

If you’re willing, consider examining this habit. The last thing you want is to spend decades chasing dreams that will never come true. You also don’t want dream chasing to consume so much of your attention and energy that you miss awesome opportunities, none of which is related to your dreams.

Please don’t let this happen to you.

If you’re ready to get familiar with Raymond’s story, grab a copy of Love Pour Over Me. Look for similarities in your life and Raymond’s story. Be open to making changes. Give yourself a chance to live your best life starting right now.