What Does Loving Yourself Actually Look Like?
We hear “love yourself” all the time.
It sounds good. It looks great on a T-shirt. And most of us would probably agree that loving ourselves is important.
The harder question is what loving yourself actually means once you get past the words. What does self-love look like in the way you treat yourself and live your everyday life?
Self-love lives in everyday choices. It's in the way you speak to yourself after you've made a mistake, the attention you give your health, the space you make for your own needs, and your willingness to reconsider something that no longer feels right for you. It can be accepting help instead of automatically saying, I've got it. It can be doing something simply because it makes you happy.
There may still be bubble baths, flowers, and solo dates in the mix. Enjoy those too. They just aren't the whole story.
Loving yourself is something you can practice in the way you live.
And your practice is allowed to change as you do.
Listen to the Way You Talk to Yourself
Pay attention to what happens internally when you make a mistake.
You may wish you'd handled a conversation differently, missed something you should have caught, or made a decision you wouldn't make again. You can acknowledge what happened, take responsibility for your part, and decide what you want to do differently without turning the experience into a judgment about who you are.
There's a meaningful difference between:
I wish I'd handled that differently.
and
I always mess everything up.
One addresses what happened. The other turns what happened into a judgment about you.
Self-love doesn't require pretending everything is wonderful or replacing every uncomfortable thought with a positive affirmation. It allows you to tell yourself the truth with enough compassion to learn from it.
When that inner commentary gets particularly harsh, pay attention to the language you're using.
You can hold yourself accountable and still stay on your own side.
Learn What You Need and Let It Matter
It can be surprisingly easy to know what everyone else needs.
You know who needs encouragement, who needs you to listen, what needs to happen at work, what's running low at home, and what needs to get done before tomorrow.
Your own needs can become harder to hear underneath all of that.
Getting reacquainted with them can start with a simple check-in:
What do I need right now?
The answer doesn't have to be profound. Rest, food, movement, quiet, connection, help, reassurance, laughter, or time to yourself are all valid answers.
Then comes the part that can be harder: allowing what you discover to influence what you do.
Too often, we respond to our needs once ignoring them becomes difficult. Rest happens after exhaustion. Help gets requested when everything feels unmanageable. The appointment finally gets scheduled when something can no longer be put off.
Responding earlier can look much less dramatic.
Take your lunch break.
Go to bed instead of squeezing one more thing into the night.
Make the appointment you've been meaning to make.
Ask someone to help.
Turn something down when your plate is already full.
You won't always be able to meet every need immediately. Recognizing what you need gives you the opportunity to decide what you can do with that information.
Your needs deserve your attention before they become urgent.
Build Trust With Yourself
Think about the things you've told yourself you want to do.
Make more time for something you enjoy. Protect your evenings from work. Be more intentional with your money. Pursue an idea you've been thinking about. Take better care of yourself in a particular area.
Following through sends a quiet message:
What I want for myself matters too.
Every intention won't become reality. Circumstances and capacity change. Sometimes we discover that something we once wanted doesn't fit anymore.
The important part is noticing whether commitments to yourself are consistently the easiest ones to break.
Choose something small enough to honor and start there.
Each time you follow through, you're building evidence that you can trust yourself to take your own wants, needs, and intentions seriously.
Give Yourself Permission to Change
There are things you wanted five years ago that may make absolutely no sense for your life today.
That's okay.
We collect expectations along the way about careers, relationships, family, success, our bodies, where we should live, what we should have accomplished by a certain age, and even what kind of woman we thought we would be.
Then life happens. We learn. We experience things. We change.
Loving yourself means allowing today's version of you to have a voice in the life you're creating.
You can reconsider an old expectation without invalidating the woman who once held it. You can stop pursuing something that no longer fits. You can discover a new interest, want something different, or admit that a life you once imagined isn't the life you want anymore. You are allowed to listen to yourself again.
Care for the Body Carrying You Through This Life
Your body deserves care in every season and at every size.
That care can be practical: keeping up with preventive health visits, paying attention when something feels different, eating in ways that nourish you, finding movement you enjoy, getting the rest that supports you, and listening to the signals your body gives you.
How you feel about your body may change from day to day and throughout different stages of your life. Care doesn't have to wait until you feel completely confident about every part of it.
You can care for your body while you're still figuring out your relationship with it.
Ask yourself- What would support my body today?
Then let the answer inform how you care for it.
Leave Room for Yourself in Your Relationships
Loving other people shouldn't require disappearing from your own life.
Pay attention to relationships where you routinely silence what you need, agree when you want to say no, accept behavior that continually hurts you, or take responsibility for keeping everything okay.
A relationship can matter to you while still having something within it that needs attention.
That could be a conversation, an expectation that needs to be reconsidered, or a boundary that needs to become clearer. How the other person responds can also give you useful information about the relationship.
Self-love makes room for your well-being in the relationships you choose to maintain.
It also makes room for receiving.
If you're accustomed to being dependable, notice what happens when someone offers to help you. Notice whether compliments get brushed aside or difficult moments stay private because you don't want to burden anyone.
Let someone show up for you sometimes.
Accept the compliment. Receive the help. Tell someone you trust when you're having a hard day because being loved well is part of the experience too.
Make Room for What Feels Good
Self-love doesn't always have to involve working on yourself.
There should be room for pleasure, curiosity, laughter, beauty, play, and things you enjoy simply because you enjoy them.
Wear the perfume on Tuesday. Read the novel that teaches you absolutely nothing. Put on the music you love while making dinner. Take yourself somewhere you've wanted to go. Spend an afternoon with someone who makes you laugh until your stomach hurts.
A life filled entirely with responsibilities and self-improvement leaves very little room to enjoy the woman you're working so hard to care for. Joy belongs in the practice too.
What Does Loving Yourself Look Like for YU?
That's the question worth sitting with.
As you read, there was likely something that asked for a little more of your attention. The way you speak to yourself. Something you've been needing. A commitment to yourself that keeps getting pushed aside. An old expectation that no longer fits. A relationship that needs attention. Something that brings you joy that hasn't had much room lately.
Start there.
You don't need to master self-love or turn it into one more thing you're supposed to be good at.
Pay attention to yourself. Listen to yourself. Care for yourself. Keep learning what you need in this season of your life.
Then make one choice that reflects what you discovered.
That's what loving YU can look like.
Take This a Little Deeper
Loving yourself differently starts with paying attention to what matters to you, what you need in this season, and what you'd like to make more room for in your life.
The Love You Unapologetically Mindset & Goal Journal gives you a place to explore those things more intentionally, from reconnecting with your values and reflecting on different areas of your life to examining your mindset, choices, habits, vision, and goals.