How to Love Yourself

Loving yourself is something that is very hard to do. It could take months to LITERALLY years. it's amazing when you do have it because you literally just sail through life. Without self-love, life seems impossible, frightening and unattainable. This subject hits home for me and it took me 3 years to finally love myself and accept who I am. So I thought, that if you are having trouble loving yourself, I'd give you some advice. First off, write everything down that you like about yourself and read it as often as you can. It has to be things about you! so don't say, "I have really nice friends." Instead say, "You are the kind of person to attract really good people into your life." The point of making a list is to constantly remind yourself of all the good things about you. It may seem too simple, but it's so effective and I promise you that it really does work if you stick with it. Another good tip that I have for you is to start accepting compliments! This is probably one of the hardest things for a majority of people. Accepting others that like you, when you don't even like yourself, is super hard to do. You can always start with a quiet thank you, or even just a smile of acknowledgment if you really have trouble saying thank you. Try to find nice, genuine things to say about others and see how they react. Some people have so much trouble accepting anything from anyone else, even a kind word. That's why you should practice giving yourself compliments every day. Make sure to notice how it makes you feel when you say something nice about yourself. If you want to love yourself,  you NEED to move through the discomfort over time and into a place of feeling comfortable and good about hearing nice things about yourself. Another tip when it comes to loving yourself, you need to realize that you cannot make everyone happy. No matter how nice or good a person you are, someone out there will not like you. The goal is to love yourself and not be like everyone else. The upside to that is, that the more that you like yourself, the less of a shit you'll give about anyone who doesn't like you. Some people will not like you for the simplest reasons-some people don't like me simply because I love myself. The number of people in your life will decrease as you begin to love yourself. But that's OK! Some people aren't okay with change, so they are resentful towards you because you are emerging and they aren't. If you have these kinds of people in your life, you NEED to let them go! They could be really mean about it and you don't need that when you're on your self-love journey. New and better people will come your way and will support you unconditionally, and they will like the self-loving you and not feel threatened by it. Now, my favorite piece of advice to give to you, when you are trying to love yourself, is to not care what other people think about you! The sooner you let  go of it, the better. The most important thing when it comes to self love is how YOU feel about you! If you like yourself, or love yourself, then that’s literally all that matters. Our society doesn’t like self loving people. As long as you know that’s it’s not necessarily personal, then you can let go of people that are stuck in that mindset and move towards the people who are open to you level of awesome instead. Try to notice when you are having worrying thoughts about what other think. Thank your unhealthy ego for trying to protect you and sure it that you are fine and that you don’t care what other people think about you. Tell yourself that you feel good and that you ARE good! Think of positive things about yourself and let the moment of worrying pass. You are awesome, you are you. Don’t let ANYONE tell you different! Self love is so so so important for your mental health and it’s so important that you remind yourself daily that you are awesome and to forget what the haters say!