They say: before we find love in a relationship we need to discover it within ourselves. However once you don’t appreciate yourself enough it is very hard to get the positive feelings flowing within you.
Here are 3 practical exercises you should do when you want to increase self-love. If you want to make an “emotional detox” after an emotionally painful experience, heartbreak, do these exercises every day for 1–2 weeks. They will reset your emotional balance again.
1, Compliment for the mirror
This exercise can be a morning routine for those who have low self-confidence. You can start the list like:
“I love about myself that…” or “I love my…”
Try to cover physical, mental, emotional aspects of yours, skills as well as congenital traits that you were born with. Say your loving thoughts to yourself while you look into the mirror.
Level 2: Involve skills and capabilities of yours that you are developing nowadays. Like: “I love about myself that I am singing better and better.”
2, Forget the Ford and do Ferrari
Think about expensive objects around you: since they are valuable, you give extra care and attention to them. This is how you should relate to yourself as well.
Make two columns on a piece of paper: one for “Ford” and the other for “Ferrari”. Think about what kind of activities make you feel like a usual person, and write under the column “Ford”. For instance eating fast food or wearing the same clothes every day can make you feel as a "Ford". After that jot down under the "Ferrari" all the activities that make you feel special, or make you feel as if you were the best version of yourself. Think about going to the gym, having massage, developing skills, cleaning the house, eating out in a nice restaurant.
You can also list meeting with people here: there are people with who you meet you might feel more encouraged or loved. People who criticize you or make you feel bad about yourself should be collected on a black list (see later).
The task is clear: try to avoid to do activities on the “Ford” list and try to do every day as much as possible from the “Ferrari” list.
Level 2: Don’t hesitate to refresh the list whenever you need. You can also think about starting new hobbies and activities that you can collect to the Ferrari list.
Be careful: If there is any activity that you have to do and makes you feel not even usual, but derogating, destructive about yourself, create an extra column as black list: you should try to diminish those activities from your life.
3, Rewrite the negative judgments
List all the negative judgments that you had met in your life and if you think about them they still hurt. Now transform those judgments to
positive statements and write next to the negative ones.
Now close your eyes, and imagine a situation, that someone tells you the positive version of the statements about you. Try to imagine a person whose opinion matters to you.
A teacher in the primary school told you that you were a terrible student? Imagine that your father tells you that you are smart and inspiring.
Do you find this difficult? The more difficult it is the more you actually believe in the negative statement: you already integrated the judgment to your identity. Remind yourself that it was just one’s opinion and not yours.
If you find it too hard to complete the imagination, tell the positive statements just as affirmations to yourself as warming up.
Level 2: Try to go back in time and meet the actual person who made the negative comment about you. Rewrite the experience for the opposite: that the same person said good things about you.