If you are not able to love yourself and believe in yourself, then you will be unable to live your life fully and reach your full potential. If you cannot learn to love yourself, you will place your happiness and success in other people’s hands, expecting them to take care of you and ensure that you feel loved and secure. As you learn to love yourself, you will begin to believe in yourself. Many people struggle with fear, self-doubt, negative self-talk, and a general lack of confidence. This article contains 21 easy tips to help you learn to love yourself – or, at the very least, help you rebuild your belief in yourself. Implementing these steps can really change your mindset, help you to feel better about yourself, and live more fully and with confidence.
1. Practice Self-Compassion
Dryden points to self-compassion as one way to lose the stigma and shame that comes with poor mental health. This, of course, invites personal reflection – how can you show yourself more kindness, understanding, and forgiveness during hard times? Because, as everyone agrees, being nice to yourself can make a staggering amount of difference.
2. Celebrate Your Strengths
When you can see yourself more clearly and recognize what you like and appreciate about yourself, then this can be the first step in developing self-love and self-belief. Stop and think about your strengths – the character traits you have, the skills you have developed, the awards you have won, the medals you have earned, or the promotions you have received at work. Decide how you feel about any of these strengths or abilities – more so, decide what it is about this strength that matters to you or why this strength is valuable to you and, perhaps, others.
3. Forgive Yourself
Lingering on mistakes and failures can undermine self-love and self-trust. Practice self-forgiveness by repeating to yourself: ‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ and ‘Lessons abound when you’ve fallen.’ Then, let the blame melt away and focus on the gift of lessons.
4. Set Realistic Goals
Focus on setting and accomplishing realistic goals to expand your self-confidence and motivate your faith in your own competence. Picture your larger, ultimate aim, then identify the intermediate steps that will take you there progressively. As you attain each objective, acknowledge the accomplishments earned. Mature self-confidence and your ability to remain unflappable emerge through support from attainable and reasonable goals.
5. Prioritize Self-Care
Healthy physical-emotional self-care is essential for growing self-love because as you prioritize activities that help feed your body, mind and soul, you practice showing up for yourself in this manner. The ways you can nurture yourself can include regular exercise, a balanced diet, adequate sleep, stress management practices, and activities that help you genuinely find joy.
6. Surround Yourself With Positivity
You feed off all that positive energy – the love, the friendly support. And you can also nurture your own self-love and belief in accomplishing your goals by surrounding yourself with others who make you feel that way. Try to have lots of good friends and to limit contact with people who relentlessly put you down or make you second-guess yourself.
7. Practice Gratitude
If you make it a habit to practice gratitude often, you’ll find yourself moving away from negative self-talk and instead focusing on the things for which you are grateful. Make time during your day to reach out and identify who or what in your life comes to mind when you think of the things for which you are thankful and for which you are blessed. Whether it is a person, an experience, or a personal quality you have that you like, start a gratitude journal and notice that you’ll be moving toward a more positive, self-loving place.
8. Challenge Negative Self-Talk
Negative self-talk is an enormous hurdle to self-love and self-belief. Whenever you catch yourself with self-critical thoughts, question your inner voice and ask yourself: ‘Would I say these things to a friend I love?’ If not, switch to more nurturing and gently realistic internal speech.
9. Embrace Your Uniqueness
It involves loving your own personality, your own quirks and idiosyncrasies, and your own experiences of the world. One of the fundamental pathways (to self-love) is embracing your uniqueness. You can see a mismatch between how you feel and who you are and the world around you, and realize that you actually don’t have to be like everyone else. Instead, you accept and appreciate who you are already. The trouble is, while okay in theory, this can be difficult to achieve in practice, so self-love psychologists recommend a two-stage strategy. A valuable first step might be to focus on your own idiosyncrasies as if they are those of a stranger.
10. Learn From Failures
Rephrase failures as learning experiences, and this will allow you to keep your self-love and self-belief in the aftermath of a setback. Hope is a deluded idea in many relationships, but you can use it as a source of learning to better prepare yourself for what lies ahead. In relationships, setbacks have the potential to help you understand yourself from a different perspective.
11. Set Boundaries
Healthy boundaries are another example of something a person needs to have in place to experience healthy self-love and self-respect. This involves being able to respectfully tell others ‘no’ when they ask or demand something that makes you uncomfortable or that goes against a value or conviction of yours.
12. Engage In Activities You Enjoy
Nurturing hobbies and interests of your own, things that you enjoy and are good at, is another great avenue to self-love and self-esteem. Doing things that we find enjoyable and rewarding helps us feel a sense of reconnection to our interests and talents, develop new skills, and feel a sense of worth and meaning.
13. Practice Mindfulness
When you practice mindfulness, you focus your attention and mental clarity on the present moment without judgment. In paying moment-by-moment attention in the ‘now,’ as part of a meditation or other mindfulness yoga method, deep breathing, and other techniques, you become more acutely aware of yourself as a conscious being within the world. This brings about self-awareness, self-acceptance, and inner balance. With mindfulness, you notice your thoughts and feelings and watch them passively rather than getting engulfed in them and reacting to them from that space. It creates a sense of compassion and love toward you.
14. Seek Professional Support
Seeking professional help when self-love proves elusive is a great idea. A therapist or counselor can equip you with tools, insights, and guidance to navigate self-esteem issues and an unfavorable self-image.
15. Surround Yourself With Inspiration
Listen to motivational content, like self-help books, podcasts, or videos, to help inspire you – but also to see how others before you overcame adversity. Being around role models who previously overcame shyness or other fears will help you absorb and emulate their positive beliefs about yourself and your prospects.
16. Take Responsibility For Your Life
Owning your own life involves acknowledging that you are in control of what you can influence and that, even in the face of powerful circumstances beyond your control, how you react to them is ultimately your decision. We have more ability to effect change than we think, but we must first take that step; otherwise, we will forever be at the mercy of our past, blaming others and the circumstances in which we find ourselves for our problems. Owning your own life means being the author of your own story, believing in yourself when no one else does, and owning your problem and the solution.
17. Celebrate Your Accomplishments
Recognize and give praise to yourself for whatever achievements you make, no matter how small. This will help further strengthen your self-love and self-esteem. Recognize and embrace your successes, achievements, progress, and growth. It will help you internalize and feel proud of your achievements and confident in your abilities.
18. Practice Self-Acceptance
If you decide to practice a form of self-love that accepts self, then part of that acceptance or loving includes all the sides of who you are, not just your strengths and the parts of yourself you like the most, but also your weaknesses as well as all your ‘flaws.’ Trying to improve yourself and perfect yourself are different practices than practicing for self-acceptance. With self-acceptance, you can appreciate who you are, imperfections included. Self-acceptance is a part of having self-love. To love yourself, include yourself in the practice – these are all part of self-love. With this larger practice, you begin with compassion as well as a sense of understanding.
19. Cultivate A Growth Mindset
With a growth mindset, you believe in your capacity to learn, get better, and surmount adversity. Learning can remain non-threatening with this approach because you see your abilities as capable of being developed through effort and persistence rather than something carved in stone. A growth mindset is associated with greater resilience, adaptability, and self-belief.
20. Engage In Acts Of Kindness
The practice of kindness to others can be a powerful way to increase self-care for yourself. Being kind to others by showing compassion and generosity and by supporting them and their needs helps you feel connected, which can increase your self-worth. This kindness can allow you to see your own challenges and strengths that can facilitate self-acceptance and self-belief.
21. Be Patient With Yourself
Learning to love yourself and believe in yourself takes time. It’s a process; some days, you’ll feel closer to your goal than on others, and the tiniest of setbacks will scare you. Be kind to yourself in your process – acknowledge the progress, even if it seems slow, and allow yourself to celebrate the small wins.
Key Takeaways
- Practice self-compassion by treating yourself with kindness, understanding, and forgiveness.
- Celebrate your unique strengths and qualities to build self-appreciation.
- Forgive yourself for past mistakes and focus on learning and personal growth.
- Set realistic goals and celebrate each milestone to reinforce self-belief.
- Prioritize self-care activities that nourish your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Conclusion
Loving yourself and believing in yourself is a lifelong process. It is not a point we’ll reach and stay at. But we can commit and practice and show patience to ourselves until we have grown confident and improved the narratives we tell ourselves. We can always be more loving and supportive of ourselves, and by practicing these 21 ways as suggested here, we can become kinder and more encouraging allies to ourselves and, with that, more open and ready to embrace the world we live in.