Raise your hand if you’re currently drowning in too many assignments and tests–don’t mind me, I’m over here trying to raise both my hands and my feet!. Now, raise your hand if you’ve stopped for, at least, a second for some well-deserved me-time without feeling guilty. I’ll be the first to confess that the constant stress doesn’t allow me to enjoy those much needed me-time. However, with time, I have found that allowing myself to rest and just be with myself has helped me tremendously in my self-love journey. Today, I wish to share them with you. Here are four things that have helped me in my journey to loving myself.
Journal
I used to be a very angsty teenager; “hating” the world and everyone around me. When in reality, I had so many bottled up emotions that I didn’t know how to handle them and felt too embarrassed to let them out. In ninth grade, my school brought a psychologist to give us a conference, in which they encouraged us to ask ourselves questions so we could learn who we were and who we wanted to be. Sure, she must have said a lot of things that day, but that advice somehow stuck with me. Before going to sleep, I would talk with myself and ask myself questions about the things I liked, the future, and the people around me. With time, I felt more confident with myself and around others. I became more gentle and lovable with myself too. To this day, I still ask myself questions, but in different ways, like journaling.
Journaling has multiple benefits for mental health and it can become part of your day-to-day hobbies. Journaling helps me create a moment where it’s just me, a moment I can check up on myself and unwind all the emotions from the day or the week. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’ll just decorate the page to allow myself time to feel and then write. Journaling has helped me immensely and I will always recommend it to others.
Affirmations
I’m sure you have seen videos of people saying positive comments to themselves in the morning like “You are beautiful. You are strong. You are enough.” For a while, I thought that it was silly, but one day I decided to try these affirmations. Imagine my surprise when I realized how powerful words can actually be. There are a lot of positive affirmations to choose from, so I decided to customize them. You might feel vulnerable at first, but I like to do it staring at myself in the mirror while saying these affirmations so I can really mean it. Being gentle with myself has been one of the hardest things, but doing positive self-talk helps and it might do wonders to you too.
Confidence: Fake it until you make it!
Dear reader, you have no idea how many times I have gotten myself out of many awkward situations thanks to my fake confidence. Every time a professor would ask me about a topic that I clearly did not study nor pay attention to, my fake confidence would take charge for long enough until I was off the hook. Other times, my fake confidence has made an appearance for the times I looked at myself in the mirror and did not feel as pretty as I wished to (or the times I was not feeling at my best and everything felt wrong). In those moments, I wear my fake confidence like a jacket and throw one or two affirmations in the mix because you know what, sometimes it’s okay not to feel at your best. No one is perfect! The more practice I got with my fake confidence, the more real it started to feel. I am not the most confident person in the world, but I fake it until I make it. And hey, I do make it!
Treating Myself
Who doesn’t love treating themselves? I sure do! Although I love some good retail therapy, being a college student with a penny-counting budget means that I can do that every blue moon. So, in my self-love journey, I have found ways to treat myself. The first one is to indulge in hobbies or activities that I enjoy and make me happy. It could be reading a book (or a fanfic… it’s always a fanfic, who am I kidding?!), doing my makeup at an unreasonable hour, decorating my reading journal, or watching BTS content. These are the things that make me the happiest and allow me to treat myself without having to go out or spend money. Another way of treating myself is doing spa nights. Every once in a while, I do the whole shebang: hair and face masks, wash my hair, shave my legs, put on relaxing music, change the bed sheets, and go to sleep early. Highly recommended! And last but not least, I go through all the good things I did in the day or week and I congratulate myself for accomplishing it! It certainly helps when I’m trying to be gentle with myself after a long and difficult day.
There you have it, folks, those are the four things I do to love myself just a little bit more every day. This self-love journey is not linear and some days are more difficult than others, but I got this, and so do you!Let’s stop being so hard on ourselves. After all, we’re all learning to be, to exist, to love, and to live. I hope you find ways to love yourself and rest because you deserve it.