Self Love: Improving Love for Yourself
You can make all sorts of lame jokes about self-love, but if you think about it seriously for a moment, loving yourself is incredibly important. After all, at the end of the day, you yourself are the most important person in your life. If you don't take good care of yourself, it's hard to take care of others. If you lack self-love, it can also be very difficult to love other people.
In this blog, I discuss the importance of self-love and what you can do to love yourself more.
What is self-love?
Self-love is actually a combination of things that show you care about yourself. When you love someone, it’s often more than just loving that person. You want that person to be healthy, to feel good, and to be happy. You want to support that person during difficult times, and you trust that person.
With self-love, you want this for yourself. You have self-confidence, self-respect, self-esteem, self-compassion and you take good care of yourself. You want to make yourself happy and feel good about yourself.
Self-love can actually refer to 3 things, namely:
- Your body
- How you think about yourself
- How to do against yourself
Self-love for your body, for example, is accepting that you look the way you look. For example, you can't change much about your height. You also take good care of your body.
How you feel about yourself has to do with self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth.
How you act toward yourself has to do with self-compassion and how well you take care of yourself.
Lack of self-love
When you suffer from a lack of self-love, it can cause a variety of negative feelings and aggression.
When you lack self-love, it can result in you being in a relationship that doesn't make you happy and having work that doesn't make you happy[1]. You do things you don't really want to do.
This is the recipe for unhappiness and ending up in an unhappy spiral.
A lack of self-love for your body can lead to a distorted self-image and unhealthy behaviors, such as spending too much money on plastic surgery or developing an eating disorder.
So a lack of self-love with how you think about yourself creates low self-esteem and self-worth which can cause you to settle for much less than you deserve. For example, you think it's okay to have a low-paying job. You stay in that bad relationship and you let people do things to you that are not good for you.
A lack of self-love can also cause you to be very harsh or cruel to yourself. You might start berating yourself (or even hitting yourself). Some people also engage in self-harm or self-sabotage. Every time things are going well in your life, you do something to ruin it.
Benefits of self-love
When you have a healthy amount of self-love, you can get over problems faster, such as those that come with divorce[2].
In doing so, you do things that are right for you and take good care of yourself.
Too much self-love can indeed lead to narcissism, but, strangely enough, this is often combined with self-hatred or self-loathing. Too much self-love can also lead to aggression, because negative feedback, for example, can damage your self-image—and you don’t want that to happen[3].
Also watch this video on loving yourself:
Increase self-love
Increasing your self-love can be done in several ways. You can look at the components of self-love and check how well it sits with yourself and then do something about it for each component.
You can increase self-confidence, for example, by gaining knowledge. By knowing what your knowledge is based on, you dare to choose what is good for you because you can better justify it to yourself.
Self-respect is about doing things you don't really want to do. Therefore, to improve your self-esteem, it is important to be able to say "no." If you find it exciting to choose for yourself, a hypnotist can help you with this.
There are also several ways to boost your self-esteem. Not only does expanding your knowledge enhance your self-worth, but there are other steps you can take as well. You can also improve your self-esteem by surrounding yourself with people who support you rather than those who bring you down.
Increasing self-compassion, in short, means being kinder to yourself. Do you have one of those little voices in your head that is super-critical of everything you do? Then it's a good start to rethink that little voice. After all, you can do anything, learn.
How well are you taking care of yourself right now? Do you eat healthily? Do you exercise occasionally? Do you take time to rest when you’re stressed? Do you do something fun for yourself every now and then? As you answer these questions, you’ve probably already answered “no” to at least one of them. You can change that. For example, challenge yourself with a 30-day challenge so that every day you can answer that one question with “yes.”
Developing self-love
Developing self-love can take a little time, such as with the 30-day challenge, and sometimes you can use a little help in getting more self-love.
Removing blockages
For example, there may be blockages that make it difficult for you to do things that make you feel more confident. Perhaps past events make you think you're not good at learning new things or that it all takes too long. In that case, regression can help remove that feeling that is blocking you from developing yourself for more self-confidence.
With regression, you go back to the first moment when that blocking belief arose, when you had that feeling. Then you do something about it with the knowledge of now, and that ensures that this feeling no longer bothers you. You may even be able to laugh at yourself.
Visualizing Desired Behavior
For self-respect, it is especially important not to do things that you later regret. Saying "no" is then important. This can be very exciting and a hypnotist can help you with it by visualizing the moment when you say no. While you are under hypnosis, such a moment is then visualized when you usually say yes while wanting to say no. This also makes you deal with the tensions of saying no. While you are under hypnosis you then learn to deal with those tensions so that you can say no more easily when the situation arises in real life.
Being kind to yourself
Self-compassion is being kind to yourself. Even when things don't go well for a while, you don't have to be hard on yourself. Always consider what you would say to a friend if they were in the same situation as you.
In addition, you can use self-hypnosis in improving your self-compassion. For example, you can then repeat the phrase:
"Even though (problem) is not going well for a while, I love myself incredibly and completely and totally accept who I am."
At times when you are about to scold yourself, you can also give yourself a hug (or a teddy bear), as long as you don't scold yourself. Imagine that you are your own best friend, what would you say to yourself at such an awkward moment?
Taking good care of yourself
Taking good care of yourself can also be very difficult if neglecting yourself has become a habit. Hypnosis can help you with all kinds of healthy behaviors, such as quitting smoking, finding the motivation to exercise more, and eating healthily.
This is done, for example, with hypnotic suggestions such as:
"I am worthy of healthy eating."
"I deserve healthy lungs."
"With a healthy body, I achieve more."
"I get to have me-time."
"I get to enjoy the outdoors."
"I get to move my body."
"It's fun to get stronger."
These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions. Depending on your beliefs and degree of self-love, a hypnosis expert can give you other suggestions to repeat during (self) hypnosis.
Self-love is incredibly important to take good care of yourself. To live a life that makes you happy instead of living an idle life. Having enough self-love ensures that you love yourself enough to want the best for yourself and to take the steps necessary to get that best.
Hypnosis can help you increase your self-love and reinforce loving behavior toward yourself. Want to know exactly how this works? Then come to a hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs. Ask about the online options if that suits you better.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/12-signs-you-lack-self-lo_n_9329236?guccounter=
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611429466
[3] https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1998-04530-016