Cultivating Self-Love

[Nico_B]

Hello friends!

Please enjoy a ~3 minute read of my musings on cultivating the essence of self-love, and finding ways to care for yourself, your community and our planet. I've included a bunch of references throughout, featuring tips, tricks and links to some amazing humans and businesses. As our ability to form in-person connections is restricted, self-love feels particularly relevant and I hope you take something away from this.

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Cultivating Self-Love - Techniques to care for yourself, your community and our planet

To me, self-love is self-care. Fill your mind with inspiration, your body with nutrition, your life with meaning. Have compassion for others, support your community, be kind to the planet.

Self-love is finding stillness of the mind, body and soul. Meditating, breathing deeply, slowing down, practicing gratitude, detaching from outcomes, emptying the mind.

Self-love is self-worth. You are loved and you are enough as you are. Your imperfections are your personal perfections.

Self-love is setting healthy boundaries. Being in alignment with yourself and others. Knowing when to say yes and when to say no.

Self-love is accepting it’s okay to not be okay when you feel demotivated, unfulfilled or purposeless. You are allowed to feel this way and you are not alone.

Self-love is being in flow, however that looks for you. Reading, writing and drawing, gardening, cooking and eating, listening to and playing music, movement, sport and exercise, spending time in nature.

Self-love is co-creating community, building connection with others and finding something greater than yourself.

Self-love is having sacred practices, like a regular morning routine. Self-love is having carefree practices and keeping things fun, simple and playful.

Self-love is allowing others to love you through heartfelt sincerity, openness, expression, transparency and vulnerability.

Self-love is exploration. Take risks, test boundaries, get comfortable with the uncomfortable, go to the edges of your comfort zone.

Self-love is going a bit easier on yourself. We all make mistakes and we are all wrong, all of the time. It’s okay.

Self-love is a boomerang. If you don’t serve yourself, you can’t sustainably support others. As you serve others, your cup will fill up.

Self-love is a mirror. Hold it up and see yourself for all that you are. Embrace your uniqueness.

Self-love is a friend. Love all that you are being and becoming.

Nico

[ecomama]

Dear Nico what an inspirational post! One that I am sure to come back to again and again.

I love the way you worded it. It felt like a warm blanket. Thankyou.

I'm off to practise some right now. Be back later!

EM

[Jesicca]

Hey Nico!

I feel really grateful to have come across this post. I love what you said about self-love being exploration, because really everything else you have listed is a form of self-love. There is no right or wrong when it comes to self-love and no "one size fits all" because it is different for everyone. It's important to be patient with ourselves and not get mad when we feel like we have a day where self-love is harder. I notice I sometimes catch myself saying something negative about my appearance or my behaviour and I'll then say to myself "that's so stupid, you know thats not true" as a way to make myself feel better, but thats just inflicting more negative self talk on myself. I want to try to catch myself doing this and say something positive instead like "are you sure that's true or are you being a little harsh on yourself" or something along those lines.

In the mean time I look forward to referring back to this post as a way to guide this thinking.

[ecomama]

Does anyone else have the feeling that self - love and self - care is an almost impossible task?

I've graduated to making myself watch comedy on Netflix. Before this were all very serious Science (usually forensic science) programs. Or History.

Before that nothing. I just denied myself.

Maybe that's the obstacle to identify? Denying oneself niceties?

EM

[Jesicca]

Hi EM,

I agree that some times we don't even realise that we are jeopardising our own self-care strategies. I used to think I didn't like watching Netflix (until I started watching it a lot more recently due to being home a lot more). I think this is because in the past I used watching tv or youtube as a way to procrastinate things and so I associated them with being lazy and thought "well I don't like being lazy so I don't like watching tv". But this definitely isn't the case and it can actually be really enjoyable to watch something just for fun instead of always for education! Something I find helps me not feel so lazy is to actually schedule time in to watch Netflix instead of using it as a form of procrastination. This was a key tool I used during my studies and highly recommend it to anyone else studying or working from home! Scheduled breaks from work often help you be more productive in your scheduled working time!