Self-love is more relevant than ever in a time where we place such high value on achieving perfection in both our personal and professional lives. In reality, this is an unrealistic expectation but can ultimately lead to issues such as low self-esteem, sleeping disorders, anxiety and depression.
As we all know, low self-esteem has a strong impact on our personal development as it dramatically influences our ways of thinking. Low self-confidence against us to communicate with others and make our own decisions. Besides, it reduces the quality of a person’s life including fear of trying, worry about judgement, or low resilience.
You will be easily surrounded by negativity when your self-care is not well-developed. Your negative feelings will directly affect your mental health wellbeing and indirectly impact your physical health as well. In addition, being negative makes you focus on your mistakes, your weaknesses, and your anxiety. For instance, you always expect the worse, scare to challenge yourself or avoid saying your opinions because you are afraid of judgement.
In our previous blog on ‘Self-love’ we spoke to Love Out Loud founder Nicole Gibson about her journey and how you can add self-love into your life. Speaking to Nicole got our minds thinking about what else we can do to improve self-love. In this blog we will give you our own tips that come from speaking to our awesome network of mental health professionals. They will be broken down into the five actionable steps of acknowledging your emotions, intentional social media use, creating a mentally healthy routine, healthy distractions and alone time.
ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR EMOTIONS
It’s okay not to be okay because we are not god, we are only human. Emotions affect us in many different ways. You can always talk to someone you trust whether your family, your friends, your seniors or your dogs and cats. Talking to someone helps you feel more relieved, they can also give you the advice to solve your problems. And even if they don’t give you the advice you need, at least they are there to listen to you and help you understand that you are not alone. Please seek help when you feel a need to do so, the encouragement definitely assists you with believing in yourself.
In terms of understanding your behaviour, Nicole Gibson has shared in our previous blog that:
“Placing more awareness over what was already there, has now unlocked a huge capacity to love myself in moments I previously remained a victim of, unable to protect myself”.
INTENTIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USE
Social media is not inherently bad, it is just about how you use it. Everything you see on social media could potentially produce pressure for you as upwards comparisons will be arisen that effectively create antisocial online behaviours or fear of missing out for you. If after three hours being on social media makes you feel bad about your physical appearance or triggers your feeling of not having enough, the ways of using social media should be changed.
You should leverage social media to your advantages. The ways to do that are to re-think what you are watching and use social media for helpful purposes such as education and entertainment. Learn more about social media affects your mental health here.
HEALTHY DISTRACTIONS
We all experience negative thoughts or low moods, and healthy distractions are a great way to redirect these into something more positive. Here are some simple options to get you started:
1. Your favourite hobbies
2. Watch a tv show/movie
3. Listen to music
4. Take a walk
5. Read
HEALTHY ROUTINE
A healthy routine is vital to good mental health. This is something we have written about before at length (click the links below to learn more). Here are the key actions for a healthy routine:
1. Prioritise sleep
2. Exercise regularly (learn more about creating a healthy routine in our blog with wellness coach Bladen Baird here)
3. Maintain a healthy diet (read about how diet impacts mental health in our blog with dietitian and nutritionist Tess Keightley here)
4. Breathing exercises (learn more here)
ALONE TIME
Setting time each day to be by yourself and collect your thoughts is nothing short of therapeutic. It is a fantastic opportunity to steel your mind for the day ahead or to unpack the day that has been wiped the slate clean for the following day.
You can choose to do whatever you like during your alone time. We recommend doing something that makes you feel good about yourself afterwards. Instead of spending five hours on social media, you could choose some of the healthier distractions we listed above!
Self-love is crucial to mental health. When you focus on what you need, you will learn to love yourself more. Take your time and find ways to empower and uplift yourself daily.
IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS CALL LIFELINE ON 13 11 14 FOR 24/7 CRISIS SUPPORT
Thanks to https://www.thisisyumm.com/blog/findingselflove
