All you need is a little self-love…

I find that there is one message I repeat with almost every client I see, “You are the only person in the world that you spend 24/7 with. Why would you want that person to be unkind to you? If you had to choose someone to spend every single moment of your life with, you wouldn’t want them to be unkind to you. So why aren’t you kind to yourself?”

There is a lot of talk about self-care these days. I sometimes think people are confusing the meaning of self-care. Having a night out to get drunk with friends is not self-care, that is self-abuse. Self-care is doing things that are actually good for you, like going for a walk, taking a half hour to sit in nature, eating healthy, talking to a friend, etc. Another, very healthy thing to do is to speak kindly and lovingly to yourself.

Would you ever call a friend fat? No, not unless you are cruel. You would say encouraging things like, “you are beautiful!” Or “I love you just the way you are.”

Would you ever call your friends stupid, dumb, or an idiot? Of course not! You would say, “you’re not dumb, you just made a mistake.” Or, “ you’re not an idiot, you just haven’t had a chance to learn that yet.”

Would you ever tell anyone you love, “You’re useless?” No! And I would take it a step further and say, you probably wouldn’t even say that out loud to someone you don’t actually like. Instead you would point out what they are good at, and encourage them to pursue those activities.

So why do we say these things to ourselves? Why do we repeatedly hurt and abuse the one person who can not escape our presence, the one person we should love and nurture the most?

I don’t have a good answer for this. For some people it might come from a childhood of being ridiculed by abusive family or friends. For others it might be they’ve been taught not to brag or gloat, so they do the opposite. Or maybe it’s because when we were growing up, no one taught us about self-love. It’s not that it was left out intentionally, but it was left out because those who raised us weren’t taught it either.

So now that we’ve come this far in understanding mental health and the importance of self-care, we need to change the way we talk to ourselves and teach our children to do the same. First, you need to practice loving yourself. It might feel awkward when you first try it, but just like everything else, it will get easier with time. So congratulate yourself when you accomplish tasks. Give yourself credit for the things you do right, like getting your kids their breakfast, getting them to school on time, getting yourself to work on time, etc. Give yourself credit for every little thing. Praise yourself for getting up and getting out there. At the end of the day, instead of listing off everything that went wrong, list off everything that went right. After awhile you’ll notice you are doing a lot more right than you are doing wrong, and I promise, you will feel better.

The second task is to teach our children how to love themselves. I don’t mean we should be raising spoiled brats, but I do mean we should raise proud, confident children. So praise them for what they do right. Teach them to give themselves high fives for their accomplishments. Model positive self-talk. Let them hear you shout “yes!” When you’ve finally finished a difficult task. Model saying positive phrases when you make mistakes. For example, “I’ll do better next time”, is much better than, “well I’m an idiot for screwing that up!” Or, “that was a good lesson learned”, instead of, “I’m so stupid for not having known that!” At dinner at night, have each person take a review of the day and what they did well that day. Trust me, there is always something!

But don’t rush ahead. You need to practice this with yourself before you’re ready to teach someone else. Start out challenging yourself to give yourself one compliment a day. When you’re good at that raise it to two. With practice it will get easier and will become more automatic. Then you’ll be ready to teach your children good habits for a lifetime of self-love. And with self-love comes so many positive feelings and experiences!

Life is beautiful and so are you…so give yourself a high five for all that you are!