Everyone says: “You should love yourself” but how do you love yourself when it feels hard to?
In this article, I’m going to explain why it’s so hard to love yourself and give you three simple steps you need to take to start your self-journey today.
If you want to watch the video version of this blog post, you can check it out on my YouTube channel:
Now before we jump into my 3-step framework on how to love yourself when it feels hard to, I want to answer one very important question and that is:
Why Is It So Hard to Love Yourself?
In some cases, it’s because we didn’t receive the proper love and affection as children, and we internalized the belief that we had to morph ourselves into whatever the other person needed us to be to feel loved.
In other cases, our parents took great care of us but they couldn’t teach us self-love because they didn’t know how to love themselves either.
We’re suffering now, as adults, because we haven’t allowed ourselves to properly express the pain of not getting the love we deserved. We don’t give ourselves the love we desperately needed many years ago from our parents or primary caretakers.
The truth is that… we simply don’t know how.
For some of us, there might be other factors involved. For example, we could think that we’re undeserving of love, and that also includes self-love.
Or we could have the toxic belief that self-love is selfish, which might be preventing us from showing ourselves some love and self-compassion.
Whatever the reason might be for you, the fact that you’re reading this article means that you’re ready to learn how to love yourself even when it feels hard to, so let’s jump into step #1:
1. Become More Self-Aware
Awareness itself is curative, meaning when you’re aware of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, that’s more than enough to make a change in your life, which in this case is to observe yourself objectively and non-judgmentally.
For example, next time you start beating yourself up, notice the stories you keep telling yourself and take note of all the times you’re criticizing yourself and diminishing your worth throughout the day.
A great way to increase your self-awareness is to try out journaling.
If you’re new to journaling or you’ve tried it before, but it didn’t really resonate with you, I have three amazing questions to ask yourself when you’re struggling with self-love.
Question #1: What do I want my relationship with myself to look like?
Describe the relationship you want to have with yourself:
- How would you show up for yourself differently?
- How would you soothe yourself when life gets tough?
- What will your life look like once you put yourself first and prioritize meeting your emotional needs?
2. What small step can I take to be kinder to myself today?
If you had to do just one small thing today to give yourself some love, what would you do? Here are some suggestions to get you inspired:
- Spend 30 minutes doing something just for yourself;
- Next time you feel like judging yourself, pause, reflect, and choose a more loving thought instead;
- Take that long relaxing bath that you’ve been postponing because you needed to take care of everyone else first.
3. What do I need to work on when it comes to my relationship with myself?
Are you being too critical of yourself? Afraid of making mistakes? Are you neglecting your needs?
Building a healthy, loving relationship with yourself isn’t something that’s taught in school, and most of us have no idea what that means growing up.
Taking good care of yourself, being compassionate, kind, and gentle, especially in difficult situations, can help you build a solid foundation for a healthy relationship with yourself.
The three questions shared in this article were directly taken from The Self-Love Toolkit which is my proven step-by-step framework that will help you learn to love yourself, unconditionally.
If you want to learn more, click here:
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Okay, now let’s get into my second tip on how to love yourself when it feels hard to and that is to:
2. Forgive Yourself
When you find it hard to love yourself, you often carry a lot of shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions that you need to let go of first. So I want you to be honest with yourself and think about all the negative stories you’ve been playing in your mind on repeat daily.
Do you feel guilty for being a bad daughter, partner, or mother? In what ways are you shaming yourself and not letting yourself shine? How can you forgive yourself for past mistakes and realize that we’re all flawed and that’s just part of being human?
When you forgive yourself, you’re going to open up to all the healing that needs to take place in order for you to embrace yourself as you are and love yourself unconditionally.
By the way, I have a free masterclass coming up on the three confidence secrets every woman needs to know. So if you want to sign up and get your hands on some exclusive bonuses, click here.
3. Manage Your Expectations
This is a huge one. If you expect to start loving yourself overnight after years of being mean to yourself, I’ll be honest with you: that’s simply not going to happen.
But, if you take 15 minutes every day to work on reframing your negative thoughts, and learning how to be gentle and kind to yourself, you will start seeing results very soon.
When you’re struggling with self-love, that often means that you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. You’re forcing it. And as a defense mechanism, a big part of you is resisting it.
I get it. It’s hard. But it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is take a few small steps and celebrate every win.
For example, if you choose to eat healthy instead of binging junk food, that’s an act of self-love. If you choose to go to bed instead of scrolling on social media, that’s also an act of self-love. Whatever leads to long-term gratification over short-term gratification is often the “right” path.
Now, if you want to go even deeper into the topic of loving yourself when it feels hard to, I recommend watching this video next:
Love,
