CONQUERing Collaboration: Learning to Love Yourself

February is the month of love! Valentine's Day and Galentine's Day are days dedicated to showering our friends, family, and partners with love. 

It's easy to forget the most important person that deserves to be showered with love all year-long when you're focused on the people you love. That person is YOU!

This month for our CONQUERing collaboration, we wanted to focus on self-love. We asked members of the CONQUERing Collective Facebook group for tips on practicing self-love. We'll share our advice and then share the amazing feedback our community provided! 

Why is Self-Love Important? 

In the past decade or so, self -love is a term that's been thrown around a lot. Movements to increase self-love and people sharing practices to improve self-love are becoming increasingly popular. It's probably something you've felt drawn to or considered working on. 

Do we really know what self-love is? Why is it so important? To begin your journey of self-love, you need to understand what it is and why it matters. 

What is the Psychology Behind Self-Love? 

The Cleveland Clinic worked with Natacha Duke, a registered psychotherapist, to explain the psychology behind self-love and why it's important. 

"When we talk about self-love, we often refer to embracing and upholding psychological concepts...ultimately self-love revolves around self-compassion."—Natacha Duke, MA, RP

While self-respect and self-esteem are integral parts of self-love, the catalyst for truly loving yourself starts with compassion. It's about treating yourself with kindness, showing up for yourself, and prioritizing your needs. 

Learning to love yourself also provides a sense of security. When you feel secure in who you are and feel fulfilled on your own, you're more likely to build strong, healthy relationships with others. 

When I think about self-love and treating myself with compassion, I start by thinking of how I treat the people I love. When I'm feeling down about myself or having negative thoughts, I try to reframe my mindset and respond how I would to a person I love. 

It's not something that will just happen overnight. You do need to commit to self compassion and to changing how you perceive yourself. 

How to Learn to Love Yourself

While a lot of learning to love yourself deals with deep introspective work, there are some tips and practices you can try for learning self-love: 

• Feel what you feel. We're all human, not all of our emotions and reactions to situations are going to be positive. When you feel guilty, or jealous, or angry, allow yourself to feel those feelings. Acknowledge that it's okay to experience negative feelings and assess what is making you feel that way. 
• Check in with yourself. Just like how you would check in on a friend that's dealing with a hard time, you should regularly check in with yourself to see how you're feeling. Is there anything you feel is missing from your life that might make you feel better? Are there needs you have that aren't being met? 
• Set healthy boundaries. Self-love means learning to prioritize yourself. Become comfortable with saying no, cutting people from your life that bring you down, and calling people out when needed. 
• Be kind to yourself. This one might feel a bit cliché, but how you talk to yourself can drastically alter how you view yourself. A lot of the time, we are our biggest bullies. Make a conscious effort to talk kindly to yourself, especially when you make mistakes or feel down. 

Those tips should be a good place to start for your self-love journey. One of the hardest parts of learning to love yourself is framing how you see yourself. Repeating affirmations daily is one way that you can begin to change your self perception. 

What are Self-Love Affirmations? 

Affirmations are mantras you say to yourself everyday. Repeating positive affirmations can help open your mind to loving yourself. Affirmations can also change the way you talk to and about yourself. 

Here are some affirmations we recommend saying to improve self-love: 

• I love myself
• I am enough
• I will be kind to myself
• I am allowed to feel how I feel
• I am secure in who I am
• I am worthy of love
• I am worthy of respect
• I love who I am

Look at yourself in the mirror while you say these affirmations so they really sink into your brain. When you repeat these affirmations, fully believe what you're saying. Everyday, it will get a little easier and you'll find yourself loving who you are. 

How Do YOU Practice Self-Love?

Now that we've shared our advice, we want to share what the CONQUERing community said about how they practice self-love. 

We asked the CONQUERing Collective Facebook group what their favorite ways to practice self-love are. Some of the comments aligned with the tips we shared above and others included tips we never thought of! We hope hearing from the community sparks a desire for you to begin the journey of loving yourself. 

Comments Aligned with CONQUERing Tips

A few of our members shared tips that we included earlier in this post. Megan G. said, "I learned one of the best ways to show self-love is to set boundaries, learning it's ok to say 'no', and understanding I don't have to be the one to fill in the void all the time." Setting healthy boundaries is one of the most important practices you can do for yourself. 

Shannon S. also mentioned the importance of setting boundaries and being comfortable with prioritizing yourself, "I realized that the best thing I can do for myself is have respect for my health, my body and my mind...most of all I keep really good people around me. If you don't respect me or treat me well then you're gone." It's okay to cut people out of our life that are constantly bringing you down or make you lose love for yourself. 

Fresh Tips from the CONQUERing Community

There was also a lot of great advice shared that we haven't discussed in this post. A lot of our members talked about spending time with the people, and fur babies, that they love. We also got to see some adorable pictures of the furry friends that bring you comfort. 

There were also pieces of advice from commenters that discussed how self-love can sometimes be difficult. 

"Self-love can be always improving yourself. Even working through the parts that are difficult. Being self aware and always striving to do better is at the core of self-love"—Lia E. 

Self reflection and dealing with the parts of ourselves we don't love are important pieces of learning to love all of yourself. Uncover why you don't love certain parts of yourself and assess how you can learn to love those parts. Does it require changing self destructive behaviors? Does it mean you should be thinking of ways you can grow and evolve? 

Finally, a lot of our CONQUERing Collective talked about how they do things that bring them joy to practice self-love. Here were some of our favorite things that bring YOU joy: 

• Creating art
• Going on vacation
• Taking bubble baths
• Spending time in the sun
• Exercising
• Relaxing
• Reading
• Growing your CONQUERing collections

Start Loving Yourself Again

We hope you feel as inspired as we do to start your self-love journey. Self-love and personal empowerment go hand-in-hand which is one of the reasons we think it's so incredibly important. We want all of our CONQUERing community to love who they are. 

A huge shout out to the members of the CONQUERing Collective that shared their advice and contributed to this post!