5 Ways to Start a Self Love Journey

Self love is an act of love for the world. You should not confuse self love for selfishness or arrogance, but it is easy to see how it can get confused.

When you are practicing self love, you are working on a relationship with yourself and that will happen how it needs to as you dive deeper into your care for yourself.

Truly, you will find your own path after you start this healing and thriving journey, but if you are not sure where to start, here are just 5 ways to start a self love journey.

1. Heal and Communicate with Your Inner Child?

While there is no order that you need to go in for your self love journey, healing your inner child is a good start. You can do this alone or with a therapist. To love a child is a powerful love. When you begin to see that you were also a child who deserved so much love, you can begin to see that there is still a child inside of you. With some inner child exercises, you can begin to communicate with that part of you and find out what it needs to heal.

2. Establish Loving Boundaries

Understanding what boundaries are and how you can keep yours sacred is a practice in self love. As a matter of fact, your boundaries not only show love for yourself, they communicate to others that your trust them to run their own lives. Learning how to establish and communicate your boundaries can have a learning curve, but it feels amazing to live within them once you know how.

3. Learn to Forgive Yourself

While you work on all the ways to love yourself, you will find that maybe you are holding a grudge against yourself. Guilt and shame can be heavy burdens to carry. Because of these burdens, we can often end up having a hard time moving fully into love for ourselves. Releasing guilt and shame through a forgiveness ritual can make us lighter and help us to understand that we were doing our best during all the stages of our lives.

4. Use Tools to Advocate for yourself

Self love means being able to stand your ground. This could be enforcing your boundaries, getting your needs met, or solving a problem with a friend. Consequently, you need to have a communication format that you use to make sure you are communicating clearly with others. Communication involves more than just talking, you will have to listen to others. Listening with a loving focus communicates love for yourself and others, while also helping you think clearly.

5. Practice Self Care

Many times self care is seen as going to get a massage or pedicure. Doing something to take care of yourself in this way can be a great way to support yourself when you need a pick-me-up. On the other hand, self care is also learning to accept yourself as you are. It is also listening to yourself and taking care of any needs that come up. Overall, self care falls under understanding yourself and how to heal anything that needs work.

Conclusion

These are just a few suggestions for you to begin your self love journey. There are so many resources out there for you and all you have to do is look at the topics above and being to dig in.

Once you start, you will discover other ways that you want to love and honor yourself. These habits will help you build a healthy relationship with yourself, which naturally leads to healthy relationships with others.

Dr. Autumn Thomas

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