Are you celebrating Valentine's Day this week?
Well, whether your answered yes or no, you most definitely should be making plans to honour one very important relationship right now (and from here on after) and that's the one you have with yourself!
When I examined the results of the
Capturing Confidence survey I did from a few years ago the number one answer that women gave as their biggest confidence hang up was body image and self esteem. Now with so much going on lately around empowering us women to stand up tall, raise our heads high and step in to our light, why are we
still not putting
ourselves on a pedestal?
Self love should always be your first love, unfortunately though, I learnt that lesson the hard way. I put others and my desperation to be loved by them ahead of my love for myself and this consistently chipped away at my self worth and eventually trampled all over my self esteem, I found myself constantly questioning why? Why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I better? Why couldn't I make them happy? Why was I so unloveable?
Recognise any of this negative self dialogue?
Not only did this allow me to devalue myself and destroy any sense of who I truly was, it gave permission to others to do the same, and so then ensued many, many years of negative, harmful and sometimes rather dangerous and abusive relationships - now doesn't that paint a lovely picture for you?!
Each time I got caught up in that mess I managed to drag myself out of it again but I kept failing to learnt the lesson I should of done which is this...
No man, or woman for that matter, should ever hold the power to define who you are or how you feel.
That power should come from you and what creates that power is self love.
The love and regard you hold for yourself is the difference between what it takes to have a healthy, happy relationship as opposed to a toxic and unhealthy one. Too many of us have stayed in some down right awful relationships because we didn't have enough respect and admiration for ourselves to say - Hey, wait a minute, I'm worth more than this, I can do better than this and I want more than this.
And here's another thing, you may be reading this and thinking that you have a fab boyfriend, girlfriend, partner or spouse and that none of the scenarios mentioned above resonate with your relationship, and that could be true, you could be with the sweetest, most gentle, compassionate, thoughtful and understanding person in the world who's treating you like a princesses but you are still looking in the mirror and not feeling very comfortable with the person you see.
You hate your body.
You hate your clothes.
You don't feel smart, creative or talented enough.
You worry about what people think of you.
You hate social situations.
You think you have nothing interesting to say.
You think you love of dressing your pup up like Britney Spears is weird and that others will think so too.
Your scared to embrace your true passion and desires because you think people will judge you.
You don't think your good enough.
And your think that your sister, your friend, your boss or that super cool mum that you follow on Instagram with the most stylish wardrobe, gorgeous house, fabulous job, fantastic holidays and gang of equally trendy, well put together, exciting and uber cool friends is much better than you - yeah, your life will never be as amazing as hers...
Now if you don't ever say even one of the above to yourself from time to time, well, I'm just gonna out right call you a liar because I know you do, we all do and I know that in fact there's a lot of you out there who are thinking these kind of thoughts on a daily basis.
I also know that given half the chance you would change. Not the things about yourself that you are uncomfortable with or wish were different or better because that doesn't create or build self worth or self esteem, the prettiest, richest, most successful people in the word are not often the happiest. In fact what would and really should change is the way you think, your mindset, this is what brings you confidence in who you are and what you want to be.
Your mindset is the key to true love with yourself.
No doubt your now sat thinking - Oh well that's great Karen, my mindset, I just have to simply change my mindset and how the hell am I supposed to just breeze along and do that?!
Well I'll be honest with you, it's not actually that easy, it takes courage, strength and practice but if you can make that commitment to YOURSELF, it's so, so worth it.
I do think that making the commitment is the hardest part because that is the thing that keeps you going when you've lost all your courage and strength, that is what will push your forward to keep practicing self love but by doing so you can get through the tough times.
So here is a little exercise to get you started...
Schedule in some time to practice self love - this is actually my favourite way to show my self love and care for who I am and want to be and I do this as often as I can to keep me focused. Each week I have time put aside for just me, to work on me. Mine is literally planned into my diary and this ensures that actually happens. For you it could be 10 minutes at the end of the day, an hour just before bed time or 30 minutes first thing in the morning. It could be every Thursday night or every Saturday morning and I wouldn't recommend leaving it longer than every week because you really do deserve to be focusing on self love on a weekly basis.
The best and biggest commitment you can make this Valentine's Day is one to yourself!
Stuck for inspiration on how to spend that time? Follow along on my
Twitter and
Instagram.
And don't forget if you have some feel good rituals you already practice do share them bellow!
