6 easy steps: how to love yourself and be confident
How to love yourself and be confident in yourself is very important to feel good about yourself and to thrive.
In this article, you will discover 6 exercises to finally love yourself as you are and have confidence in yourself.
How can we learn to love ourselves?
Loving yourself: a little test to better situate yourself
Wondering how to learn to love yourself? Well, it starts naturally by identifying where you are. Do you need more love, what do you need to have better self-esteem and more confidence?
Because self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence are strongly linked.
Answer yes or no to these questions… and discover its conclusions…
You like to look at yourself in a mirror and find yourself imperfect but pretty.
When you make a mistake, you take the time to put it into perspective: “It’s okay, you’ll do better next time.»
You know exactly what your right place is and do your best to occupy it.
In your daily life, you never compare yourself to others, or very rarely.
You are able to hear the critics and learn from them without taking offense.
Finally, you know how to say no when you are asked for too much.
You have understood that if you have answered yes to all these questions, it is because apriori you give yourself all the love you need. You have good self-esteem. You trust yourself, you know who you are and what you want, and don’t let others get in your way.
If this is not the case, then read on and discover some exercises for learning to love yourself that will change your life and are even indispensable for living the aligned and exciting life that awaits you.
1st exercise: Meditation on loving-kindness
There is nothing like meditating daily on loving-kindness to learn to love yourself.
If you have difficulty loving yourself, you must first know that love is a natural quality that is within you from the moment you are born until you die. It is even a natural quality that is everywhere, that connects all beings to each other, within the universe. Isn’t it necessary to “make love” in order to create life?
Children who lack love do not develop as well as others. Experiments have shown that plants to which you show love become more beautiful and vigorous. Love is everywhere, so loving yourself shouldn’t be very difficult and is mostly a matter of regular training.
A meditation on loving-kindness goes like this:
Exercise 2: Hunting down negative messages
It is difficult to learn to love yourself when you have received negative messages from others in building your self-esteem. Because if you have not been taught how to love yourself, then you are dependent only on the image that others send back to you. And since others themselves don’t have the instructions on how to learn to love themselves and make others happy, then chances are you have received negative messages.
Learning to love yourself involves identifying these messages, to defuse them.
If you feel that you are suffering from negative messages that you have received, this exercise will be very useful.
Make a list of the people who have participated significantly in the construction of your self, the influential people who have marked you: your parents, brothers, and sisters, other close ones, teachers.
What negative messages about you do you remember? Those things that you regularly heard and may have taken for granted?
Take time for this reflection. When you have listed about ten negative messages, whether or not they were expressed clearly, then write a positive message next to them that counterbalances that negative message. Ten tips to help you learn to love and trust yourself better
Grow professionally, cultivate friendships, find love or simply feel good about yourself. These are all issues that we all pursue, and that requires a minimum of self-esteem. However, it is often much more natural for us to denigrate or belittle ourselves than to recognize our qualities, our strengths, and our skills.
“Self-esteem is both the source and the consequence of our actions and thoughts. It is a rich and complex concept since it gives both a description of the human being in himself, but also of the human being in interaction with others.
Loving yourself: what does it mean?
Loving oneself is sometimes frowned upon. Perhaps you yourself associate it with the concept of narcissism. But think again!
Learning to love yourself is essential for your personal development. It is not something superficial, something that would remain on the surface to fill your ego. It is about learning to accept yourself as you are. With your share of light and shadow. By accepting your faults, your negative emotions, your fears… But also by recognizing all your qualities and your talents.
To love yourself is to reconnect with your true nature: love. Welcoming every part of your being, good or not so good, to reconnect you to your creative power. To be able to choose a more aligned life.
Love yourself: why is it important?
Learn to love yourself to allow yourself to shine.
If you feel that you don’t love yourself enough, which is probably the case since you are reading this article, then discover without delay these six exercises that will teach you to appreciate yourself. Learning to love yourself again is obvious because you are unique: no one on earth is exactly like you, with the same skills, the same talents.
Your life is precious, and you need to make this sentence stand out from the commonplace phrases whose meaning you no longer even perceive.
Your life is REALLY precious. There is no chance, but there is a consistency, in the sense of your presence here: when you are interested in the science of the infinitely large and the infinitely small, you realize that the probability that your presence on earth is a chance is infinitely small, not to say nil. You probably have something unique to bring to the world.
Learning to love yourself to love others
Wondering how loving yourself can help you in your relationships? The answer is very simple: you only accept the love you think you.
Because the opinions and actions of others tell you more about them than they do about you, don’t take for granted what you may have heard and/or experienced. Don’t let them undermine your confidence. The key is to learn to love yourself, even when others don’t love themselves enough to send you away.
3rd exercise to learn to love each other: my qualities and talents
To love yourself is to recognize that beyond your faults, you have qualities. But it doesn’t feel good to know and talk about your qualities, so you tend to dwell on those critical traits. Go in search of self-knowledge and reverse this tendency!
Simply list all your qualities in your notebook.
What are you good at? Whether it’s material talents, things you can do more easily and quickly than others, ways to be regularly praised?
If you find it difficult to list your qualities and talents, then group together the compliments and positive messages you are used to receiving from those around you: spouses, children, parents, friends, colleagues. What do they say about you? What compliments do you regularly receive?
Group all your positive traits, talents, and qualities on a sheet of paper in your notebook, and don’t hesitate to come back to it as soon as your morale is at half-mast:-)
4th exercise: to love oneself is to accept one’s mistakes and faults
It is not a question of hiding your face, of pretending that you only have qualities and talents, it would be counterproductive because it is wrong and not very effective to move forward in life and evolve positively.
Learning to love yourself is therefore also about working on your faults and mistakes. It is either accepting your defects or trying to make them better and limit their negative impacts. It is to choose serenity on a daily basis.
Take the time to list your defects in your notebook. If you have difficulty, think about what your entourage regularly reproaches you for (But in general, it’s easier than for your qualities!). Now ask yourself: how could you act on these negative traits of your personality? What small actions, what small steps could you take to minimize these flaws?
Loving yourself also means acknowledging your mistakes, in all humility. When you have obviously made a mistake, when you have made a mistake, get into the habit of acknowledging it. “Yes, I made a mistake.” Accept responsibility for the mistake, while asking yourself what you can learn from what happened. What can you learn from it? What will you need to do differently next time so that you don’t make the same mistake again? In short, loving yourself, even when you make mistakes, is also a way to learn and grow!
5th exercise to learn to love oneself: to encourage and console oneself
It’s strange because very often you’re harder on yourself than on others: it should be the other way around, but it’s not. Because you may have lacked security as a child, you’re more used to admiring others for who they are and what they do, and much less yourself. This little exercise is about getting into the habit of talking to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend who would come to you.
You have a problem. You are having difficulty, whether it is recent or has been dragging on for months and months. You are not caring for yourself and can’t get out of it. So imagine for a moment…
This problem is not yours, but your best friend’s problem. He/she comes to you and asks for your opinion. What would you say to this friend who has this problem? What would you advise him/her? How would you reassure her/him?
Can you now do the same thing by using your first name instead of hers?
Loving yourself means learning to treat yourself as if you were your best friend. Because you are your best friend.
Exercise 6: Taking action
Of course, if you wish to improve your self-esteem, your benevolence, your self-confidence, it is important, after the phrase of “getting to know and understand yourself better”, to take action. What does it mean to take action?
Identify what really matters to you in life;
As well as the brakes that prevent you from moving forward, wanting to overcome your fears;
Finding your right place, your contribution to a better world;
Create step by step the life that suits you, this life where you will be exactly yourself, perfectly fulfilled.
This is what you can do right now. Make it your priority. Learning to love yourself means recognizing that nothing is more important than your happiness and doing everything possible to create a life worth living. Because you are worth it.
Conclusion
The 6 exercises to remember to learn to love yourself:
Meditate on loving-kindness;
Hunt down negative messages;
Knowing your qualities;
Learning from one’s faults and mistakes;
To know how to console oneself;
To take action.