5 Ways To Practise Self-love for Your Emotional Health

It’s Valentine’s Day Week and while you think about your loved ones, you must also look after someone who needs your first attention, i.e- YOU. Whether you are a working professional, a student, a caregiver or an entrepreneur, you cannot pour from an empty cup. To give love and care to others, you must first care about your feelings, boundaries and capacities.

Our societal norms are such that if we put ourselves first, we are immediately labelled as a selfish or self-centred person but everybody functions differently, and knowing what works for one helps in managing expectations rather than taking away the joy of living.

In this short piece, I am sharing a few ways (validation that we all need) that can help you start practising self-love for better emotional health without feeling guilty about it.

1.) Count your blessings: I know for many its sounds cliche, but for some, it works. When you count your blessings, you deliberately bring your awareness to your inner circle, a very refined and narrow group of people who adds a lot of value to your life and make you feel loved. It helps you to enhance your self-esteem and cut down on the negative feeling of unworthiness.

2.) Embrace your imperfections: You can never be perfect at everything, know everything, have all the answers and have it all sorted out at once. Embrace not knowing things, as it gives you a scope to learn new things. Accept your flaws, as it helps you to work on them and overcome them, and do it only for yourself.

3.) Drop the idea of fitting in: Fitting in requires constant efforts, and over time you will realise you have put a lot on yourself and you do not have any energy left to please others. How about just being yourself? It requires minimum effort and as you begin to own yourself you feel more confident. 

4.) Take a mental health day off: Your body gives you a sign, an alarm that it’s exhausted, but you still keep ignoring it. You feel dull and drained yet you push yourself, and keep going hard on yourself. Take a break from everything, give yourself some mental rest and unwind a little.

5.) It is ok to feel not ok: You are a human, you have feelings and emotions, and you are bound to feel stressed, overwhelmed and have bad days. Acknowledge your situation, and allow yourself to feel how you are feeling. 

To conclude, loving yourself and putting yourself first are two different things. When you love yourself, you completely own yourself and you know how far you can go and when you need to stop. When you act selfish you mostly end up hurting others and honestly, you will never have it perfect in either way. Just try to slow down, reflect and work on raising your awareness and it will eventually help you to strengthen other relationships in your life.

To make this Valentine’s all about you, DUSA presents to you a Self Love Valentines Day! Come make yourself a perfect hot chocolate cup full of Love for you!

There is a variety of toppings including whipped cream, sprinkles, chocolate flakes and so on! We will see you at the Level 2 Reception.