Loving yourself is an essential way to help others love you. Most of us have no time to do something that makes us happy.
If you are working, there is always a deadline you have to meet and if you are a working mother, it only makes the situation worse. If you are a student, you don’t have enough “me-time” because you have to be in college and hang out with friends and let’s not forget the silly tantrums with parents.
Here is a seven-day challenge that can help you overcome all the reasons holding you back from loving yourself. So, dedicate some time to this seven-day challenge and learn how you can love yourself.
7-Day Challenge For Cultivating Self-Love
For your 7-day self-love challenge, you’ll need a journal and time set aside just for yourself.
Day 1
Journal Topic – Describe Your Day
It is always a good practice to spend time writing about the events of a particular day. Not only will you go back to what happened, you will associate certain feelings with it.
So, if something hurt you during the day, you know you should not encourage it the next time. You will also have a clear idea about how you spend your day and what your feelings were – anger, happiness, or sorrow.
Activity – Spend Time With Yourself
After you reach home from work, make sure you unplug from every possible source including your phones, tablets, and other electronic devices. Spend time with yourself. You can take an evening walk around your neighborhood or the nearest park and listen to the sounds around you. You can sit on a bench and take deep breaths and feel good about yourself.
Try to be one with yourself and with nature at the same time. Try to feel the wind in your face and see how that makes you feel.
Day 2
Journal Topic – Write How You Feel Every Day
It is not possible to measure your feelings. At one point you may be happy and the next, you could be sad. Spend some time writing about how you felt on a particular day. This will help you analyze what you feel and you can change them if they are inclined toward negative feelings.
Write down events that trigger positive feelings and the ones that trigger negative feelings. Then, write how you could have handled your negative feelings better. This way, you are teaching yourself to deal with your own problems independently.
Activity – Focus On Being Positive
It is always easy to complain and worry than be positive and happy about little things in life. You need to focus on the little things that make you happy. For instance, if you feel happy spending time with your pet dog or cat, you should do that more often. Positive thoughts can change how you feel and look at things and people.
Day 3
Journal Topic – Describe Yourself
It is always a good habit to write what you think about yourself. You can make two columns in your journal – one for the good words that describe you and the other, for the bad ones. Observe how easy it is to describe both your good and bad. If you find it easier to come with negative words that describe you, then it is a sign that you think too low of yourself.
This is the time to change that. Every day, learn something about who you are by describing yourself. Slowly, eliminate the negative words and replace them with positive traits. This will boost your self-esteem.
Activity – Relax Your Body And Mind
Spend 30 minutes to an hour meditating and relaxing your body. You can join yoga classes or even learn how to meditate at home. Soaking yourself in a warm water bath and listening to your favorite music can help you relax both your mind and body.
Learn to worry less about the past and the future and focus on your present. Keep happy thoughts in mind and get rid of the negative ones.
Day 4
Journal Topic – Write What You Are Grateful For
Every day, there should be something that you are grateful for. Write at least five things that made you feel grateful. You can write about your parents, your friends, your journey to your workplace, etc.
Learning to be grateful is important because you will then develop a habit of appreciating even the small things you receive in life.
Activity – Be A Volunteer
Volunteering has a lot of benefits. Volunteering builds empathy and strengthens social bonds and these factors increase the feeling of happiness and love. Skill-based volunteering can help you develop new skills which may also help you in your career.
It also promotes a sense of achievement, boosts self-esteem and personality, promotes better physical and mental health, and connects you to your community.
Day 5
Journal Topic – Accept Yourself
You should always be able to love the person you are. You don’t have to change anything about yourself because others want it that way. Write down a few character traits that are hard for you to change. For instance, being anxious or paranoid; it is okay to be anxious and if you accept that yourself, it will reflect how others accept you as well.
If it is a physical trait like a scar, you need to accept it and you need to feel comfortable in your own skin. Write it down in your journal as though you are encouraging yourself to feel good about the person you are. If you feel low on any day, flip those pages and read what you wrote to yourself.
Activity – Read A Book
Reading has many benefits. It can stimulate your mind and keep your brain active. Reading can help you acquire knowledge and expand your vocabulary. Reading a book can also improve your memory, boost concentration, feed your imagination, and reduce stress.
All of these benefits can help you expand your thoughts and you spend time with just the book and yourself. Reading promotes a “feel-good-about-yourself” feeling.
Day 6
Journal Topic – Face Your Past
Journaling is a good way to heal from a rough past. The emotional satisfaction one receives from writing reduces stress, anxiety, and promotes good sleep. If you’ve had a difficult past and cannot seem to get over it, writing will help.
Don’t crowd your mind with negative thoughts about certain events that happened in your past. Learn to transform your feelings to words and it will become easier for you to let go. This way, you are freeing yourself and your mind from something that’s hurt you.
Activity – Bring Back An Old Hobby
We’ve all had hobbies when we were younger and had time to spend on it. Drawing, dancing, singing are just a few examples. Try to think of a hobby that made you happy when you were younger and spend time developing it.
Day 7
Journal Topic – Pen Down Your Goals
It is always a good habit to write down your short-term and long-term goals. It will keep you focused on what you need to achieve during the day or even a couple of months down the line. Writing them down can also help you prioritize your day.
Activity – Eat Healthy And Exercise
You can show that you love yourself by loving your body. Make sure you provide your body a healthy, balanced diet along with regular exercises to stay fit and healthy. A healthy life is a happy life. Apart from eating and exercising, try to quit unhealthy habits like drinking too much alcohol, smoking, using the cell phone while eating, etc.
Self-respect, self-worth, and self-love all start with you. Stop looking for your value through others; instead, love yourself unconditionally.
