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Many of us are so consumed in our day to day lives that it can be easy to ignore giving ourselves love and attention that we deserve. There are lots of things you can do—both big and small—to practice loving yourself.  Speaking kindly about yourself, taking compliments graciously, taking care of yourself, honoring your emotions, pampering yourself, celebrating your successes (and failures) and appreciating your flaws are all simple—although not always easy—things you can do to practice self-love. Here are 10 ways to practice Self Love

10 Ways to Practice Self Love

1. Learn How to Say No– It’s okay to say no. In fact, it’s important for self-love! It is important to learn how to say no to people, even people you love. It’s not loving if you always agree to do something you don’t want to do just to make someone else happy. Instead find something you can do with or for someone that makes you both happy.

2. Choose Energy– Every day that you wake up you have a choice to make it a good day or a bad day based on your decisions and actions. As you go about your day, events will happen that are outside of your control. Only you can decide how you will let these events affect you. You can choose your emotions, you can choose the meanings you assign to events, and you can choose your reactions. Guard your energy, because as soon as you start feeling down or low it will impact not just you but everyone around you. Show love to yourself by choosing positive emotions and reactions to everything life throws at you. If you are completely knocked off your feet, lean on your friends and family for support.

3. Treat Yo’Self-We are all busy, there is lots to do every day. And many of us spend most of their day assisting others, whether personally or professionally. It’s imperative to restore, recharge, and repair yourself each day, and sometimes the only way to get some “me”-time is to carve it out in stone! Do it, and do it regularly! Even 15 minutes a day completely to yourself, with no other obligations, can be enough to recharge. Sit and read a magazine and have a cup of tea. Take a bath, or a long hot shower. Take a walk or sit outside in nature. Turn off your cell phone and leave the laptop behind. Ignore the phone, and don’t respond to requests for help. Be vigilant about your personal time. Let nothing and no one disturb you. If you’ve never carved out time for yourself, you’ll be amazed at what happens when you start doing it. It’s so re-energizing! You feel restored and replenished and ready to give some more to those around you. Especially for those of us with young children, we spend a lot of time attending to their needs, and begin to feel energetically depleted and sometimes frustrated and angry and our fuses become short. Sometimes to love others more, you have to step back and love yourself first. Indulge in a reward. Do you reward yourself for a job well done? How about a life well lived? Go on, reward yourself.  It can be something such as taking a day off and going to the spa, or you can reward yourself with a new book, or a night out, or a nice meal at a fancy restaurant. Keep a list of rewards, and as you tackle new challenges in your life, attach a reward to completing one. It’s guilt-free and you’re worth it! And it’s okay to indulge even if you didn’t accomplish something, or if you tried something that didn’t work. Failure is not the time to punish yourself. Try the opposite approach and give yourself a small treat, like a bubble bath or a cup of frozen yogurt, instead. Giving yourself a boost can actually make failure less frightening, which means you’ll be more likely to take risks in the future, meaning, you’ll be quicker to dust yourself off and try again.

4. Do what you love-One of the greatest ways to love yourself is to make sure that you are spending your days doing what it is you love, whether professionally or personally. Going to a job you hate, negative energy exudes out into your office environment and affects others. When you go to a job you love, your positive energy washes over others creating a more positive environment. You owe it to yourself to do what you love, and to do what makes you happy, and that benefits others as well! If you’re at a job you hate all day and you come home grumpy and depressed, that’s no fun for your family. Likewise if you’re a stay-at-home parent and you’d rather be working, you’re injecting a lot of negative energy into the home. One of the greatest gifts you can give your family, friends, and co-workers is to love yourself enough to insist that your day is spent doing something you love and that makes you happy.

5. Forgive Others– Holding a grudge or carrying anger and resentment towards others only burdens you. Every morning you have to pick up that grudge again and carry it around with you all day. You have to send hateful thoughts to other people. It’s like putting poison in a cup and sending it to your enemy hoping they will receive and drink it. Why not just decide to forgive? Tomorrow morning, instead of picking up that grudge, pick up a cup of forgiveness and drink it. Let it go. Give it up. Let them be. Move on. Concentrate on your own life and your own future, and leave the past in the past. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Whatever was done to you, decide you learned a valuable lesson, and move forward. If you need to extract some meaning from the experience, help other people who may have been hurt in a similar way.

6. Be Grateful– Gratitude has a super high vibration. When you are in a state of gratitude and feeling blessed you become even more resourceful than you can imagine. Journal each morning and write down 10 things for which you are grateful. Being in a state of gratitude restores and resets you. Gratitude is a simple way to help show love to yourself and to others.

7. Evaluate Your Internal Dialogue– What are you thinking and saying to yourself? Is your mind chattering in fear and negativity, or is it speaking words of possibility and strength? Often our negative thoughts are based in fear of the future, or regrets of the past. Both of these types of thoughts have one thing in common – they hold you back from being present. Take a moment to be aware of any negative thoughts that arise, and rather than fighting them, imagine just letting them go. Practicing this allows your mind to relax and be open for other more productive and positive thoughts. You can’t create a beautiful life if your head and heart are full of clutter. Commit to a daily habit of mentally and emotionally unloading. Once a day, write out everything that is weighing you down or stressing you out. Seeing it all on paper gets it out of your head and heart, making it that much easier to let go of. This practice will give you room to explore your deepest desires and find ways to make them a part of your day-to-day activities.

8. Shift your focus– Turn off and go inwards. Grab a cup of your favorite tea, coffee, wine, whatever your choice of drink, and sit down for a few minutes on your own and spend some time in silence.  No TV, phone, or distractions, just you. This is a great time to meditate or just to think about the wonderful things that are happening in your life right now, what your big dreams are, and how you can make them come true.  Make this a daily practice and find some small accomplishment in every day. It’s inevitable that you are going to have your up days and your down days. This is fine and very human. It’s especially important on difficult days to find at least one thing that makes you happy as it helps to shift your mind and energy around what’s going on.

9. Move your body – Fill your body with food and drink that nourishes it and makes it thrive. What we put into our body, and how we take care of our body, impacts our overall vibration. Move that beautiful body of yours every day and learn to love the skin you’re in. You can’t hate your way into loving yourself. Exercising daily helps us to look and feel better about ourselves which is a perfect gift of self-love.

10. Do something good for somebody else– Treat others with love and respect. It makes us feel better about ourselves when we treat others the way we hope to be treated. That doesn’t mean everybody will always repay the favor, but that’s their problem not yours. Be the change you wish to see and never underestimate how a smile, compliment or favor can make someone’s day!