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You put a lot of effort into many different relationships over your life, from your family and friends to you partner and kids (if you decide take that route). However, there is one relationship that is super important but is one that you may forget to put proper effort into….. your relationship with YOU. It’s time to start building a better relationship with yourself through practicing self love.

When you start practicing self love you start showing yourself the care you deserve. Practicing self love is about looking after your own needs and putting in effort into building up your own wellbeing and sense of self, so that you can be happy with yourself and love who you are. To help you practice self love, we have detailed six exercises that you can work through to connect to your true self and start showing yourself a bit of priority. If you’re looking for something a little more tailored, we have also provided you with some ideas for self love activities based on the five self love languages.

This post is all about practicing self love.

Self Love Exercises For Practicing Self Love

1. Know Who You Are

Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love.” This means that if you really want to start practicing self love, you first need to understand who you truly are. A great way to do this is through self-reflective activity that is designed to help you understand who you believe you are.

All you need for this activity is a blank (reasonably well sized) page, a pen and a willingness to reflect properly on yourself.

First, draw an outline of person on a piece of paper or in a journal. Draw it reasonably large, you may need a fair amount of space (especially if you have big handwriting). This outline of a person represents you. Inside the outline of the person write down everything that you believe makes you, you.

Here are some examples of what you can include:

• Things you are passionate about
• Words that you would use to describe yourself
• Your beliefs about yourself
• Life experiences that you feel have shaped you
• Your values and beliefs

Everything that you have chosen to write down forms your perception of yourself. This is who you are on the inside.

Extra for experts

If you want to take this activity to the level, around the outside of the person, write down any advice for yourself, quotes or words to help inspire you to stay genuine. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll give you some examples.

Here are a couple of things I wrote down when I did this activity:

• “Trust your heart. There is no need to be indecisive about things. You know what you need and want. Don’t be afraid to choose or to express your wants to others.”(incase you hadn’t gathered, I sometimes struggle with indecision).
• “People walk into your life for a reason and some walk out for a reason. Either way, it’s for a reason. Trust this.”
• “Continue to see the good and the beauty in others. Everyone has value.”

Basically the idea of writing these things around the outside is that it helps you stay true to what you value on the inside. They help give you reassurance when you start to doubt. They also serve as your little reminders that put back on course when you lose your way. So make them personal and make them meaningful – they need to speak to you.

2. Address Your Labels

We collect a lot of labels as we move through life. Some labels we give to ourselves. They are our way of defining ourselves and finding our place in society. Whereas, some labels are given to us by others as their way of making sense of us in their world.

These labels you carry with you unconsciously influence how you behave in life. They may even influence some of the decisions you make. While you may have collected a lot of good labels that do represent who you are, there is a high chance you may have also collected some hurtful and unhelpful labels that may be impacting you. This self love exercise is your chance to reflect on all of these labels and try work through the ones that are no longer serving you.

Take the chance to write out all the labels you have given yourself and others have given you (the good and the bad ones). Once you’ve written out all the labels you can think of, it’s time to reflect on them. Spend a moment on each label and think about whether the label has a positive effect on you, how it impacts your life, and whether it aligns with who you know you are.

If you find a label that does not work for you, try thing of some strategies to change that label or for you to let go of it. For example, it may be a negative label like being labelled as “bossy”. If this label is an accurate reflection of you, you may need to do some personal growth and find ways to sit back and let other people take control or make decisions from time to time. If it’s not, you may have to unpack why you have been given this label and decide whether it’s something you need to do something about, or whether you can just let it go.

3. Do a self love meditation

A guided meditation can be a great way of practicing self love.

Meditation allows you to relax and connect to your body. It helps you bring consciousness to beautiful effort your body puts in to keeping you going. A guided meditation comes with extra benefits. While you are focusing on your breath and being present, you are guided through activities that can make you focus on topics – like self love. For example, the video below includes exercises like practicing gratitude, repeating positive affirmations to affirm yourself and visualisation exercises.

So if you’re looking for a quick way to destress, reconnect to yourself and to have a little mood booster, definitely give a guided self love meditation a go!

4. Practice taking a compliment

If your usual response to a compliment is to act embarrassed and deny it profusely, then this is the activity for you. Learning to take a compliment is a great way to practice self love. When you deny a compliment, it can unconsciously reinforce a negative self-belief that you may hold. Plus it does not make the person who gave the compliment feel good about giving you a compliment. Rejecting a compliment might negatively reinforce the compliment giver’s behaviour, making them less likely to give you compliments in the future.

For this self love activity, challenge yourself to a week where you graciously take every compliment that comes your way (even if you do not fully believe the compliment). Instead of denying the compliment, try responding with “thank you” or “thank you, that is really nice of you to say”. The more you practice taking compliments, the easier it will get. You owe it to yourself to accept the nice things that people say to you. It’s a way of showing yourself love.

Something to note: Only do this activity if it fits in with your lifestyle. In some cultures, it is respectful to deny a compliment. It is a way of maintaining modesty.

5. Reflect On Your Relationships

As Stephen Chbosky once said: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” If you are not in the best relationship with yourself, it might mean that you keep toxic people around because you feel like they treat you how you deserve to be treated. Which is in no way good for your long term wellbeing. Therefore, a good way of practicing self love is recognising when you are holding onto unhealthy friendships and relationships and then doing something about it.

Reflect on your friendships that you currently have. Do these friends treat you well and allow you to be yourself? Do they want the best for you and support you when you need it? Are they people you can have a good time with but also turn to when you need it? Answering questions like these can help you establish whether you have true friendships or whether you may be keeping a hold of some ingenuine or toxic friends.

If you do recognise that you have unhealthy relationships in your life, it’s time to start making a plan of what to do about it. Check out this post for learning about how to deal with unhealthy friendships. It might be the case that you can address your concerns with your friend and both put in effort to make a healthy friendship, or you may end up needing to let go of the friendship.

6. Create a self care routine

Self care is a form of self love. It’s your way of taking the time to look after yourself and give yourself the care you need and deserve. It is not a selfish act, it is an act of self love.

Often when life gets too busy or stressful, our self care has a tendency to fall to the wayside. This is why having self care activities weaved into your regular routine can be super helpful. If you are habitually making time for self care in your daily life, you are more likely to consistently meet your self care requirements.

So if you haven’t guessed it already, a great way to practice self care is by creating a self care routine. Take a moment to jot down some ideas of self care activities you would like to start including in your life. Then slowly start trying to feed them into your daily routine. Maybe you’ll start with making a bedtime routine, or a routine for when you first get up in the morning, or maybe you’ll fit in some self care over your lunch breaks. The key is to find spaces of time where you can fit in and to be flexible with it.

For some great tips on creating a self care routine that you are more likely to stick to, check out this post.

Practice Self Love Using Your Self Love Language

Your self love language can be the perfect guide to help you figure out the best ways for you to practice self love. It can help you understand what you can do for yourself when you are needing to feel that extra bit of love. It can also give you ideas for when you you’re feeling good and want to celebrate you in the best way possible.

Here are a list of ideas of little ways that you practice self love based on your self love language. Don’t fret if you have more than one self love language. Feel free to mix and match as you please.

Physical Touch Self Love Ideas

• Create a skincare ritual
• Lie down in the sun and relish the feeling of the sun warming your skin
• Wear your comfiest clothes, put on your fluffiest pair of bed socks and curl up in a warm snuggly blanket
• Give yourself a self-massage
• Go for a warm bath (don’t forget some essential oils, a nice candle or a lil bath bomb to get you feeling pampered)
• Take your shoes off and go for a walk (preferably somewhere where you won’t risk stepping on something sharp)
• Be mindful of your posture: Be sure to stand or sit up straight and avoid slumping or slouching
• Do some face yoga exercises

Acts of service self love ideas:

• Declutter your wardrobe
• Organise your living spaces
• Tick a job off of your to do list that you’ve been putting off
• Prepare all your meals for the week so you don’t have to worry about it when the week starts
• Let yourself have a nap
• Create a relaxing space for yourself in your house
• Schedule out some “me time” for yourself
• Do that random hobby that you’ve been wanting to try

Words of affirmation self love ideas:

• Write yourself some post-it notes with affirmations you want to remind yourself of and pop them in cute places for your to see throughout your day.
• Design yourself a positive affirmation or inspirational lockscreen for your phone or laptop
• Buy yourself some self love stickers to stick on your laptop, phone, water bottle etc.
• Make yourself a poster of all the things you love about yourself
• Create a self love playlist filled with songs that inspire you and make you feel good
• Come up with ways of rewording your negative thoughts about yourself
• Create yourself an affirmation board, like the one in the picture below

Quality time self love ideas:

• Find a quiet spot that brings you joy and read a book or do some art
• Go camping
• Spend the day learning something new
• Treat yourself to a picnic
• Take yourself on a hike
• Give yourself a self-care day
• Have a beach day
• Plan a solo date night
• Get inspiration for more creative ways to spend some quality time with yourself
• Turn off your phone for the day and spend the day just with you (or if that’s not possible for safety reasons, turn off all notifications from social media apps)

Receiving gifts self-love ideas:

• Pick yourself some wild flowers or go and buy yourself a beautiful bouquet
• Paint or draw yourself a picture that inspires you, or treat yourself to a personalised paint by numbers
• Knit, crochet or sew yourself a new piece of clothing
• Treat yourself to your favourite snack or meal
• Buy that item you’ve been thinking about for wayyy to long
• Buy yourself something nice for your room
• Create yourself your very own self-care kit
• Add some new items to your wardrobe
• Book yourself a night away in a fancy hotel

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“How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you”

Rupi Kaur

So what are you waiting for? Start practicing self love now! Not only will you be working towards building a better relationship with yourself but you will also help ensure others love you in a way that is meaningful to you.