How to Love Yourself in 5 Simple Steps

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Is Love the BIGGEST problem in our world today?

If you were to ask me what I think the biggest problem our world faces today, I would easily say that it is a lack of love; both self-love and love for other people. We have a tendency to look at our world and to see the horribly bad things going on and feel like all is hopeless and getting worse all the time. But when it comes down to it, nearly every negative thing that happens is the result of someone lacking love for themselves or for someone else. Think about it for a minute.

If someone really loved themselves, would they need to take harmful substances to make themselves feel better or to escape from their lives?

Most of the people committing heinous crimes are people that are massively disturbed inside that need internal help but haven’t sought it out.

Most people taking their own lives feel like their lives are not worth saving.

Most people join gangs because they want to feel like they belong, like they are part of something bigger than themselves, like they matter.

Most marriages end because one or both partners do not feel loved or fall out of love.

Most teenage pregnancies result from someone having sex to feel loved.

Most anorexic or bulimic victims think they’d get more control over their lives or love from others if they were skinnier.

Many people that are on diets (if not all) are watching what they eat because they think in the end they will love their bodies (or other people will) and they will be happier.

The great majority of us are walking around feeling insecure, depressed, frazzled, addicted, overwhelmed, stressed-out, and sleep deprived. More and more people are living every day because they feel like they “have to” instead of “get to.” But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Can we Really Heal the World With Love?

So many of the world’s problems today could easily be resolved if each of us were to take a look in the mirror and learn to love who and what we see, and believe in a bright future. Too many of us live with feelings of self-loathing and disgust. We don’t like what we see but we have no idea how to change that. We have no internal peace, and therefore there is no external peace.

Change starts from within, not from something outside of us. If you want to feel better, have more love, lose weight, feel loved, or ANYTHING, you need to change yourself from the inside out. The more people that do this, the more the cure will spread, and we will see massive improvements to all these symptoms in our world.

I believe that at our core, each and every one of us wants to “make the world a better place.” We each have a desire within to know that we can make a difference and that we will be remembered. We yearn for belonging and for safety (world peace).

In order to really “heal the world and make it a better place,” we need to dig much deeper than enforcing stricter laws and penalties. We will need to go farther than helping those in need by giving them food and shelter. We will need to see past the cries for love and attention. We will need to cut deep into the heart of the matter and see what is causing the disease to begin with. Since all of these problems can be traced back to someone lacking love, the solution or cure to this widespread epidemic seems somewhat obvious.

Imagine a world in which we all loved and accepted ourselves for exactly who we are. What if our children were to learn self-love and acceptance both at home and a school. How different our world would be. However, we can’t blame our schools or our upbringing for how we are feeling. We can’t wait for other people to change or for the subject of self-esteem to be added to elementary curriculum- we’d be waiting for forever! But there is something we can do right now…

Challenge #1: Take a Look in the Mirror

Michael Jackson had it figured out when he sang, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make the change…. I’m starting with the man in the mirror.” In order to change the world, we first need to change ourselves. When each of us take the initiative to look in the mirror and choose to love and accept the person we see, we will start to see drastic changes in our society.

I want to challenge you to do something today. It might seem strange and a little difficult for some of you, but it is a good way to test how much you really love yourself. I want you to stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and say:

“I love you and accept you exactly as you are right now.”

Then stand there and evaluate exactly how that makes you feel. Do you feel squeemish, silly, uncomfortable, defeated, like you’re lying to yourself, or something else?  Write your feelings down. By doing this simple exercise, you will begin a journey of self-love and acceptance. Doing work in front of the mirror allows us to dig deep within and find what is blocking our self-worth and happiness.

Heal the Inner Child

For most of us, there is a young inner child buried within us, longing for love and attention. Maybe you’ve been holding on to something a teacher or parent said in the past and have allowed it to eat you up inside for years? Perhaps you are holding on to guilt for some past mistake or misdeed that makes you feel like you don’t deserve love. It could be that you harbor resentment for something bad that happened to you as a child, like abuse or neglect, and it has made you feel worthless for a long time. Whatever it is, discovering and uprooting these limiting beliefs can absolutely free you from a lifetime of self-loathing and disgust.

By healing the inner child or the wounded adult within, we will feel alleviated from both physical and emotional pains. Many people, after learning to believe in themselves and forgive their past have been healed from horrible things, even from cancer. (If you want to read more about this, Louise Hay is one of my favorite resources. She was a powerful public speaker and teacher of how to love oneself and wrote several books about the matter. The mirror work above, was from her book, “Mirror Work” and some of the other things I’ve written were things I’ve both learned on my own, and from her many Youtube audios, and books.) I’ll provide the link for it, so you know where you can easily buy it and start to love yourself today!

Challenge #2: What do you Love About Yourself?

The second challenge I want you to do is to

Here are a few more things you can do to immediately start increasing how much you love yourself…

Five Simple Steps to Increase your Self-Love

1. Continue to do mirror work. You can say the phrase I taught you above, or something like, “I love you, I really really love you.” Several times a day for as long as it takes, until you realize that it no longer pains you to say it. You could also start using affirmations to attract more and more great things into your life.
2. Start a Gratitude Journal or Practice. One of the easiest ways to start feeling good about yourself is to write down the things that you are grateful for. I like to do this as part of my morning & evening routine, to start and end my day off on the right foot. Write down at least one thing that you love or at least like about yourself. You may find this impossible or easy, and doing this simple exercise will give you a glimpse into how good you feel about yourself and what you can work on. I also suggest doing this out loud (in front of a mirror) at least a few times  a day. This can be a powerful and easy way to start increasing self-love almost instantly.When we concentrate on things that we appreciate about ourselves or our lives, we will attract more of them into our lives. (learn more here: What is the Law of Attraction?)
3. Begin taking more time for yourself regularly. For me, I had to start waking up earlier than my children to get some “me time.” I used to think that I needed that sleep, but now that I have gone without it for two years, I have found that I crave that silent alone time and it makes a giant difference in my well-being and how my day goes. It doesn’t matter when you do it, but it is crucial to be a little “selfish” for at least a half an hour every day. Find the time and do something you love, something you have put-off doing, or something that fills you up (emotionally, spiritually, etc.)
4. Take care of your body. When we start exercising or eating better, we start feeling better both inside and out. Something as simple as a ten minute power walk in nature, where we unplug from technology and plug into the world around us can be beneficial to both our health and our soul in very little time.
5. Stop all criticism right now. This is one of the most crucial steps you can take to start feeling more love for yourself and for others. When you stop the inner critic and refuse to listen to or say anything bad about yourself or other people, you will find that in no time you will feel so much happier and better about life.

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