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
Pinterest : Little Hopeful
Email : MyHappyBubbleXx@outlook.com
