Loving yourself

Go back through your life and try to remember the things that you that helped another feel better.
things you have accomplished that you would you would consider as doing good if it were anyone else but you.

For the things that you did that make you feel bad about yourself, ask yourself if you were talking to another person and they told you, would you forgive them? If the answer is yes, then forgive yourself.

usually things like trying to rid yourself of bad feelings can take a while and you might need assistance. It is hard to be honest with yourself and that includes restoring self esteem or coming up with ideas that excuse don't happen overnight and take work.

Alex4

First you have to find out who you really are. This isn't something that you figure out in a week, really take your time.

Start by writing down what makes you unique: your traits, talents, skills and thoughts.

Take your time with this. Also write down the points you are not so good at to have a complete image of yourself.

You should also accept what has happened in the past and how your present looks like right now. Self acceptance is very important and a necessary step if you want to love yourself.

Actually, I have recently written a blog post about how to love yourself. You might like it:

https://www.proudconfidentman.com/how-to-learn-to-love-yourself-ultimate-guide

Dennis

I've started a self-love morning exercise that I've done every day since January 3rd, this year. Maybe you might find it useful. It's fairly easy to do, and can give you some decent insights on how to love yourself more.

The exercise:

Your task is to write six to ten endings for four sentence stems related to Self-Love.

This is an example of a sentence stem:

Self-Love to me means ...

In the morning, before proceeding to the day’s business, write this down in a notebook or on the computer, then, as rapidly as possible, without pausing for reflection, write as many endings for that sentence as you can in two or three minutes – never less than six, and ten is enough. Do not worry if your endings are literally true or make sense or are “profound.” Write anything, but write something.

After doing six to ten endings for the first stem, go on to the morning’s next stem, and continue until all the morning’s stems are finished.

When you are finished with the morning’s stems, proceed with your day’s business. Do this exercise every morning. Do not read what you wrote the day before. Naturally there will be many repetitions. But also, new endings are inevitable.

The trick is to work as rapidly as possible, not pausing to “think,” inventing if you get stuck, without worrying if any particular ending is true, reasonable, or significant. Any ending is fine: Just keep going.

When doing sentence completions, the idea is to empty your mind of any expectations concerning what will happen or what is “supposed” to happen. Do not impose any demands on the situation. Try to empty your mind of anticipations. Do the exercise, go about your day’s activities, and merely notice any differences in how you feel or how you operate.

Below are the sentence stems that you do each morning:

Self-Love to me means ...

Self-Hatred to me means ...

If I bring more Self-Love into my life ...

One of the things I can do to love myself more today is ...

If you want more information about Sentence Completion exercises, look up Nathaniel Branden. Sentence Completion is his mode of therapy. It's a very powerful method to create very real change in your life. It has had a profound effect on my life.

I hope this helps you.

There is a ton of self help stuff out there that covers this topic, and I've read most of it. I think the best way to actually get to a place where you can love yourself is through forgiveness.

We've all made mistakes, everyone has. But people who find it difficult to love themselves generally haven't forgiven themselves for sometimes quite small problems and events.

Take a look at your life if you aren't;t loving yourself. Pick out all the things you feel guilty for and examine them in te cold light of day. Eventually you will see that you are valuable, important and worthy of love.

Be 'okay wth yourself' and everything you've done to get to this point in your life. It works.

I enjoyed reading this thread, been working hard lately just to ignore issues happening between me and my husband I guess I should find time to love myself more because I deserve it!

bunnyrabbit wrote:How does a person deeply love and accept themselves?

First of all, accept that you're not "perfect". In fact, you don't have any choice, because perfection is an illusion. Everyone has flaws. Accept it.

Secondly, dare to be wrong.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, YOU have to compliment yourself, first and foremost! The number one cause of depression is harsh, critical words used against yourself, which is really stupid when you think about it, lol!

Fourth, have boundaries. You have to define what kind of behavior you accept from people, and what kind of behavior you don't. You'll have to reinforce those boundaries.

Fifth, stop hating yourself or belittling yourself. It's easy to do to get outward attention and pity. Don't do that.

Lastly...Praise yourself. Love yourself like you would love someone more than your own life.

I hope that helps.