Regardless of what you are doing on Valentines Day or who you are spending it with, taking time to LOVE yourself is important.

​Self-love essentially means loving yourself. This involves treating yourself with kindness and compassion; appreciating everything that you do; forgiving yourself; honoring yourself!

How can we improve our self-love?

We can start by increasing our awareness and developing self compassion for our relationship with ourselves. This is THE most importance and most stable relationship you will ever have, but most of us don’t view it that way.

Here are some steps to help improve your self-love:

1. Engage in Positive Self-Talk

How do you treat yourself? How do you talk to yourself? Chances are that you talk to yourself differently than you would your best friend, colleague or partner. Chances are that you are more critical and judgmental of yourself than others. Changes are that you might not even be aware of this. Many of us are very compassionate to our friends, family members and even strangers. However, when it comes to ourselves we aren’t so nice. Once we recognize and acknowledge this, we can begin to replace some of the negative self-talk (I am so stupid, I made such a bad mistake) with positive self-talk (I can do this, I tried my best). As a result, our mood, energy and behaviours will improve!

2. Focus on your Strengths and Accomplishments

We know that our brains have a negative attribution bias. This means that if I were to tell anyone 9 positive comments and 1 negative comment (regardless of the order), they are most likely to remember the 1 negative comment. Similarly, it is probably easier to remember the 3 mistakes you made yesterday, as opposed to the 3 things you did well. But we are going to change this! Yes, we want to acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them, but it is also importance that we recognize our strengths and accomplishments.  You can do this by keeping a record of your overall strengths and accomplishments (if this is challenging, then ask your loved ones). Writing it down is very useful because you can refer to them if you experience self-doubts in the future.

3. Compliment Yourself & Say “Thank You” When you Receive a Compliment

This step can be particularly challenging for many people. It is easy for us to be very highly critical of ourselves and put ourselves down. It can be hard to give ourselves a compliment. But just like anything else in life, it gets easier once we start doing it, it gets easier and we are creating a new habit! When we receive a compliment from others, our automatic reaction can be “No” or “BUT” and we try to argue or disagree; sometimes even convince the other people that they’re wrong (BUT today I dressed up; or BUT you’re just saying that)…instead stop, take a breath, smile and say “thank you”.

4. Reward/Treat Yourself 

Do something you enjoy! Reward yourself with something that makes you happy and something that you enjoy. You can treat yourself with your favourite food, a massage, a bubble bath, your favourite movie, a night out, some quiet time etc

Valentine’s day is the perfect day to remind yourself of all the people, places and things that you love. It’s also a great reminder to continue (or start) focusing and honouring yourself. Start practicing the steps listed above, to help increase your SELF-LOVE. Continue practicing this everyday!