Welcome to Self-Love week ! I'm really excited about this project. It's such an important topic and I can't wait to talk to you about it :) I'm going to be posting everyday for the next five days about different things to do with self-love. From quotes to self care boxes and little ways you can incorporate it into your day to day lives, We've got it all ! I mean we even have a snazzy little logo for the week hehe :)
So today I thought we'd talk about, what actually is self-love? First lets get rid of a few misconceptions, here's what self-love isn't :
- It's arrogant
- It's pointless
- It's vain
- It's for people that are stuck up
- Selfish
- It doesn't matter
Wrong, WRong, WROng , WRONg, WRONG !
Here is what self-love actually is, by dictionary definition :)
self-love
noun
- regard for one's own well-being and happiness.
Self-love is about being comfortable, confident and happy within yourself. It can be difficult to achieve, especially with all these horrible misconceptions surrounding it. But I'm glad to say it's becoming more accepted and more people are talking about it and coming to understand that it's not vain it's necessary.
It can play a massive part in helping people ( male and female - many people think this is only important with women ) gain more self confidence as it increases their self-esteem and lets you accept yourself for who you are, making you more comfortable with yourself. This opens so many doors! Either to being happier doing the things you already do or to try knew things you never thought you'd have the confidence to ! . You can't tell me that's not important ?
When I broke up with my boyfriend for a while about a year ago, although it was a sad time for me, after a few weeks I began to notice something new. I started to look at myself in the mirror and think : "You know what ? I'm actually looking okay today .. no I look pretty .. I'm actually quite pretty!" This was a massive moment for me and I honestly believe it was because I became too reliant on needing somebody else to tell me I was beautiful and that should not be the case . Once I got back with boyfriend, although I was and am happy, that confidence again became reliant on him. I'm telling you this for two reasons:a) People often think of Self-Love as something that only single people need. form of confidence so that they can see their happiness should not depend on being in a relationship ( which it shouldn't ) . But what people forget is people who are in relationships also shouldn't have all of their happiness and confidence depend on their boyfriend or girlfriend. This is something It took me a long time to get to grips with. Yes my boyfriend is lovely and sweet and makes me extremely happy and yes he regularly tells me I'm beautiful and all the rest. BUT there's also a lot of other things that make me happy that are completely separate from him and I am trying to get to a point where I have enough self esteem to not need his reassurance that I look nice .
b) There's no reason that somebody else telling me I'm beautiful should be worth more to me than accepting my body and allowing it to be beautiful to me . In fact , I'm living in here ! Surely I should have more of a say than anyone else on what defines my own standards of beauty !
So , give yourself time to love and accept yourself. To stand in front of a mirror and say "You know what ? Its not that bad . Actually I'm kind of pretty looking !" Allow yourself to be comfortable, make a list of things you like about your personality and a list of things you like about your body ! You can find lots of little challenges like this in my " 30 Day Happiness Challenge " Let me know 3 things you like about your body and three good things about your personality in the comments !
You could ever take it a step further and use a sharpie to write positive words over your body ! I saw this recently in a post by Rainbow-Rose Blossom ( She's a brilliant blogger who frequently promotes self-love and you should definitely check her blog out ) that I'll link to here . I thought it was a really empowering thing to do !
Anyway, that's it for today ! It would mean the absolute world to me if you could share this around however you can because I think this is a really important topic and I'm so excited about raising some more awareness of it ! Check back tomorrow for the second instalment. It's all about how to make yourself feel good about yourself from the inside with lots of tips on everything from healthy eating to getting descent nights sleep !
Stay Strong <3 Stay Smiley :)
lots of love, Marianne xxx
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Email : MyHappyBubbleXx@outlook.com
Lovely post x I was wondering, would you like to follow each other? And maybe leave some comments on each others posts?
ReplyDeleteyou can delete this layer if you want hehe x
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Thank you ! Of course that sounds lovely :)
Deletelots of love, Marianne xxx
I LOVE this post Marianne! Your blog is sooo positive and I absolutely love stopping in. Self Love is so so so important. It's so hard to be led into believing you need someone or something to make you happy but really when you find happiness in yourself is when you are truly blissful! I love this reminder, you are amazing! I hope you had a wonderful weekend gorgeous! XO -Kim
ReplyDeletewww.thethirtysomethinglife.com
*easy, not hard!
DeleteAwww That's so kind of you ! I really appreciate it :) It really is so easy to become reliant on other people to feel loved or if you don't have other people to believe you have no choice but to sit around disliking yourself until your knight in shining armour turns up ! But it's so important to be able to make yourself happy because then you have control over at least some of the happiness in your life so it wont go away :)
Deletelots of love, Marianne xxx
Great start to the week :D I think that self-love is often misinterpreted. It can be easy to just assume that someone who is confident in themselves is a bit arrogant, but really theres a huge difference. I think it's so important that you found confidence within yourself and not through other people. It's so much easier to feel better about yourself when someone else compliments you then it is to compliment yourself. It's so much better being able to love yourself and know that you are beautiful then it is to be told by someone else.Three things I like about my body: My lips, My hands, and My legs. That was actually really hard, I still feel iffy about picking those because I'm not really confident in the way that I look. Three things that I like about my personality: I'm funny, I'm loyal, and I'm Kind. I feel like this one was easier because it's not something that people can physically see and point out. I'm also much more confident in the way that I carry myself. I really want to start loving myself more and I think that self-love week will be so help full :D I can't wait to read the rest <3 This is so great Marianne x
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I'm so glad you're liking it so far ! Your opinions on my posts always mean the world to me :) I agree the difference is massive, but people just don't see that because they don't actually know when someone is practising self-love so they're never exposed to it to learn about it . For example, if someone is happy and comfortable with themselves they rarely feel the need to shout about their self and tell people how happy they are because they no longer need conformation from others on their own body . But someone who's arrogant would often be showing it but society then has nothing to compare it to so assume that arrogance and self love are the same :) I find it really interesting that people feel more iffy about pointing out physical things that are good about themselves, It's really common. Perhaps because it gives other people more "evidence" to disproveand shoot you down with . But in the end it's your body and you live in there so it's how you see it that matters :)
Deletelots of love, Marianne xxx
I completely agree, self-love is about loving yourself, not being selfish. People need to understand that, society too. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteIf you have time please take a moment and check out my new blog: Trillu.com
Have a nice day!
Exactly ! There has been a massive misunderstanding formed over the whole subject so it' really impotant we try and show people what it actually is :)
DeleteOf course, I'd love to have a read! I always love reading new blogs <3 I'll just go get myself a hot chocolate and then i'll sit down for a proper look !
lots of love, Marianne xxx
Aww haha thank you ! :) It was quite hard to write about my relationship because it's difficult to word that I love my boyfriend but I still want to be my own source of happiness without making it sound like a break up hehe :) I agree I've known a lot of single people ( including myself when I was ) who sit their feeling down because they just want someone to love them and make them happy.But they don't realise that they can be that person can be them and that someone to love them additionally , will turn up eventually when the time is right :)
ReplyDeleteYour kind words really mean a lot to me :) I couldn't really not mention it ! Your blog is brilliant for this kind of stuff and I knew it would help anybody interested in the topic <3
lots of love, Marianne xxx