The First Steps Towards Self-Love
Today, I want to address the topics of self-love and body image! Before we get started, I want to say that I am by no means considering myself to be a self-love guru or anything but I did make significant progress in my self-love journey and I am hoping to share that with you all today along with introducing you to a couple people who made a big difference for me! 1) Accept yourself The first step of my self-love journey was probably accepting myself the way I was. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence trying to be like everyone else, trying to change myself. So the day that I discovered that it was ok to be who I was and that shouldn't be ashamed of that and shouldn't try to hide that, I took a giant step towards self-love. 2) Forgive yourself Through the years of trying to be like everyone else, I made a lot of bad decisions and wrong choices, so once I realized that, I was really upset with myself. But then, I realized that without making those mistakes I wouldn't be who I was today, and where I was, that these mistakes had taken me where I needed to be and I needed to stop regretting and resenting myself for them and just forgive myself and move on. 3) Believe in yourself I grew up in a family where dreams were out of reach and there wasn't much hope for the future. So a big step towards self-love for me was recognizing the beauty of my dreams and allowing myself to believe that I could reach them! 4) Know that what matters is how your body feels ​Recently I gained a bit of weight, and my husband, Tim, and I had a vacation planned to Cuba for reading week. I felt really self-conscious and uncomfortable to the point where I wanted to simply cancel the vacation to avoid having to be in a bikini with the extra weight on. Then, I started to realize how ridiculous it was for me to pass on such a nice and well-deserved vacation because of the way I looked. I am not saying I'm 100% ok with my body, but I shouldn't let it ruin my vacation.
I also underwent a major mindset shift where I started seeing my body more for what it could do than for what it looked like. By what it can do, I mean lifting weights and running, and other mechanical stuff like this but also the wonderful processes that human bodies can do like thinking (neurons communicating) and digesting (creating and utilizing energy from organic material), etc. Our bodies are wonderful machines! Since then, my cardio got a lot better, my body doesn't hurt and much and I can move more functionally, and I became way more flexible.
Check out Kelly U and any.body_co for self-love and body acceptance inspiration!
5) Surround yourself with people who can support you As I mentioned earlier, my family wasn't exactly supportive of my ambitions, so the day I met like-minded people who saw the world the way I did and believe in what I could accomplished, it made me feel so much better. I had finally found a support system that could help me believe in my dreams. Surrounding yourself with people who can help you realize your true worth is a big help when struggling with self-love. love,
Laurie
