When we decide to take control and live our lives intentionally, I think the first thing we need to do is learn to love and accept ourselves where we are now. For me I always thought when I achieved my goals or when something happened, then I would be happy. My happiness was conditional. It was controlled by outside events, events I had no control over. As I read and listened to people who were further along the journey I began to realise I needed to take control of my own happiness and I needed to love and accept myself today and every day, not in spite of what I saw as my failures or shortcomings but because of them.I researched and read extensively on the subject. I found eight things that worked for me.
- List your strengths – one of the most difficult things for us to do is list our strengths and this can take some time. It’s important to realise how many strengths we all have.
- Surround yourself with people who affirm you and who support you. When the people around you are positive and affirming, it is easier to recognise your strengths.
- Monitor your self-talk. We are our own harshest critics. We are very quick to put ourselves down and to pick out things we think we’ve messed up. The easiest and most effective way to do this is with affirmations. Find positive statements to replace the critical self-talk and repeat them to yourself, even write them down. Even when we don’t feel positive, we can talk ourselves into it!
- Be kind to others. Doing things for others makes us feel better in ourselves and about ourselves.
- Gratitude. The biggest game changer for me was gratitude. Every day write down all the things you are grateful for – big things and small things. It can be difficult to begin with but it gets easier and easier. If you are grateful for all your blessings everyday it becomes a habit and then self-love becomes much easier. I love my Gratitude oil when I am writing my gratitude.
- Don’t compare – comparing yourself to others or comparing what you have to what others have is the quickest way to become unhappy and resentful of yourself. This was something I did a lot and I will discuss in more detail in another post.
- Learn to accept failure as an opportunity for self-growth and learning. We all fail at times. Things don’t always go right and it becomes very easy to begin to criticise ourselves and beat ourselves up and then give up. If we can flip our attitude to failure, we come a lot closer to self-acceptance. I use the Valor roll on when I need to carry on after a failure or when I need to step out of my comfort zone.
- Don’t give up. There are days it’s hard to love yourself but that’s ok. There will always be days like that, they will just be a lot less frequent. The secret is putting those days behind you and not letting them destroy your efforts. We can achieve anything we put our minds to.
I’ve been trying to do all these things for over a year and I have found that since I started using my oils things have become much easier and much clearer. I diffuse oils every day as I’m working on these things but I also make blends that I put on my skin and they help me all day. I have started using a selection of specific feelings oils and affirmations morning and evening that are making a huge difference to me also.
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