Take the 7 day self-love challenge to transform your life
Learning how to love ourselves is often the most transformative thing we can do, and it doesn’t have to take a lifetime.
by: E.B. Johnson
Self-love is a core component of happiness. When we are unable to see the beauty and strength in ourselves, it makes it harder to see beauty and strength in others. Like RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the h*ll are you gonna love somebody else?”
Learning how to love ourselves is one of the most important skills we can master in this lifetime. In a world that constantly tells you that you aren’t enough, cultivating self-love is a radical act of self-establishment and self-expression that allows you to stake out your place in the world. When we learn to love ourselves as much as we love others, we actually unlock a number of surprising benefits that can help us transform our lives and turn them into the future that we’ve dreamed of all along.
What is self-love?
We tend to think of self-love as a state of mind that makes us feel good or content. While this is most certainly true, it’s much more than that, and one of the best and most beautiful things we can do for our own growth.
Loving ourselves — more than just feeling content with who we are or where we’re at — is an appreciation for yourself that extends far past the superficial into your core. It’s dynamic, and encompasses all our behaviors, thoughts and reactions in a way that encourages growth and a celebration of strength.
When learn how to love ourselves, we empower ourselves to make better decisions and bolster our physical, spiritual and psychological development. Acting with self-love allows us to look past our shortcomings at the beauty that’s sleeping within us, and allows us to extend the same compassion to ourselves that we extend to others. It’s an expression of passion, purpose and value, and an expression of respect for our inner, authentic selves. Learning how to love ourselves is one of the most beautiful things we can do, and it has some truly amazing benefits.
Why loving ourselves is so important.
Mastering the art of self-love takes time and hard work, but it brings with it truly incredible lessons that can turn our lives around for the better. When we learn how to love who we are, we learn how to love our bodies, our minds and our hearts. With this kind of radical self-acceptance, we can weather any adversity and create a life and a world around us that we can be proud of.
Seeing to your needs
When you don’t love yourself, it’s easy to overlook your own needs and trade them in for someone else’s. Once you’ve mastered the skill of loving and respecting yourself, you’ll start seeing to your own physical, psychological and spiritual needs — before those of others — and you’ll start to feel better and happier. Having your own needs met actually empowers you to work harder and help others more efficiently, but you have to love and respect yourself to see the entire picture.
Building resilience
Loving ourselves increases our confidence and helps us get better at weathering adversity. When you are able to extend respect and compassion to your authentic self, you’ll stop comparing yourself to others and realize that you alone have the strengths and skills needed to overcome anything that life throws at you. Loving yourself is a superpower, and one that allows you to look forward with optimism (once you know how to use it).
Gaining fulfillment
If you’re someone who’s wondering through the world, looking for fulfillment through material goods or other people — you might be lacking the self-love you need to thrive. Self-love empowers us to accept our lives and the situations we find ourselves in and it also empowers us to realize that we alone are the source of our own happiness and fulfillment in life. Loving yourself allows you to see and accept the power you weild over your own life, and when that happens you can gain satisfaction no matter where you find yourself in the journey.
Healthier habits
Learning how to love yourself on the inside has a funny way of making you love yourself on the outside too. Though we might be coached to hate our bodies (especially as women), loving our interior helps us to love our exterior, and develop healthier habits that make us feel good, happy and in control of our destinies. Loving your body means giving it the food, sleep, water and exercise it needs to thrive. When you’re stuck in a negative loop of self-loathing, however, those are some of the first things to go out the door.
The 7-day self-love challenge.
If you’re ready to start loving yourself, the good news is you can make massive strides in a short amount of time. Thanks to personal development coach Maria Johanna, in just 7 days, you can start cultivating the self-love you need to thrive, but you’ve got to open up your mind — and your heart.
Day 1: Mindful Meditation
Mindful meditation can best be described as a mental training process that allows us to unlock the true power and potential of our compassion. By focusing your mind on your emotions and experiences (and how they relate to your current state) you can become more present in the moment, and more present and compassionate with your authentic needs and sense of self.
There are a number of surprising benefits that come with developing a mindful meditation practice, and those include better focus and increased self-esteem. When you take a little time each day to zero in on your subconscious, it makes it easier to understand that subconscious and therefore respect and love it the way that you should.
Johanna created an “Activate Self Love” meditation that you can listen to on the first day of your new journey, to start the process of sending critical messages to your subconscious. These meditations can help get you in the mindset you need to kick off your journey right, and is a great starting point for learning how to respect who you really are on the inside.
Day 2: Coming first
On the second day of your journey, you’ll move from setting the right mindset to learning how to put yourself (and your emotions) first. When we don’t love ourselves like we should, we start to view ourselves as unworthy and that’s when we fall out place and fall to the whims and machinations of others. If you want to cultivate real and lasting self-love, you’ve go to learn how to put yourself first.
Make a list of the things in your life that you don’t want to do, and then a list of the things you do want to do. Drop the judgement and the external pressures and answer honestly from the bottom of your heart. When you’re done, take a few seconds and look at how many things you wish you could say “no” to and how many things you wish you could say “yes” to. Are they equal? probably not.
As humans, we’re social creatures and that can make us fall victim to the desires of others. Over time, we forget that we have full control over our lives, and when that happens we can start to feel lost and incomplete. Think about how you spend your time and consider how you wish you could spend it. Part of loving ourselves is going after the thing we want, not the things other people want for us.
Day 3: Accepting yourself
If you’re struggling to love yourself, chances are you are also struggling to accept who you are and where you’re at in life. Self-love and self-acceptance go hand-in-hand and cannot exist without the other. When we can’t accept ourselves, we can’t see the good in ourselves and we even struggle to see it in others. Radical self-acceptance is the key by which you can unlock the love and compassion that will transform your life.
For the third day of your one-week self-love journey, Johanna created a mindfulness exercise that helps you tap into a radical sense of self-acceptance. Find a quiet space where you won’t get interrupted, and spend a few moments centering yourself and taking some deep breaths. When you’re ready, consider a situation that you’re struggling to accept. Is there any aspect of it that you can control? What aspects of it are out of your control?
Breaking down tough moments into these two categories can help us separate ourselves from them in a way that allows us to plot, plan and release. Spend your time focusing on the aspects of self or situation you can change, and let go of the things you cannot. Create a plan of action, and chip away at it every single day. Stay positive by keeping your eye on the prize and your soul centered on the things in your life which you can control. This will build both your confidence and your self-acceptance.
Day 4: Learn how to self-care
Self-care gets a bit of a bad rap in today’s society, but it’s a critical step in unlocking who we really are and learning how to love ourselves. In its simplest form, self-care is any activity that allows us to rest or recharge. In practice, however, it can be a bit trickier to institute — especially if it’s something you’ve never engaged in before.
According to Johanna, the fourth day of your self-love week is a great time to tackle the first steps of self-care, and start patching together a regular system that works for you. You can start simply by just reevaluating what you eat, or get as fancy as a full-on day in the spa. What matters is that you give yourself some space and time (alone) to get comfy with your body, your thoughts and your emotions.
It’s important to remember that self-care isn’t selfish. Though many of us have been conditioned to view such “luxuries” as better wasted on anyone but ourselves, this is insecurity speaking — one of the great underminers of our happiness. Take some time for yourself so that you can learn how to love yourself. No one can take better care of you than you, so start doing it.
Day 5: Redefining happiness
Though it can be hard to accept at time, happiness is a choice and it’s a choice that we make each and every day. We can choose to be happy, or we can choose to be sad. Our emotions are only a part of us, they are not the master of us, but we have to love and respect ourselves to understand that.
One of the best ways to get happy again is to start putting yourself back into situations that make you happy. On the fifth day of your self-love challenge, sit down and write a list of the things and people that make you happy. Stick to simple things, or things that help encourage organic happiness in your life. Don’t hold back, and don’t be afraid to look to things as simple as “listen to music” — you might be surprised at what comes to you.
Put an eye to the future and create a goal of doing 3 things each week that make you happy. Little by little, you’ll notice your mood increasing and your happiness levels beginning to increase. Beyond your one week-challenge, seek to surround yourself with things that make it easier for you to be a ease with your emotions and your sense of self. Overtime, that strength and happiness will become a part of your regular routine.
Day 6: Practice gratitude
One of the biggest contributing factors to our continued unhappiness is a loss of gratitude. The world might be filled with misery, but it’s also filled with beauty too. Learning how to be grateful for these moments of true happiness and beauty is a great way to not only bolster our sense of contentment, but also a great way to combat the hopelessness and anxiety we often feel.
On day 6, find a quiet space and take some time to write down at least 10 things that you’re grateful for. Start with the small things, working your way up and paying closing attention to things that encourage organic happiness and contentment.
At first, you might struggle to identify things that you’re truly grateful for, so get creative. If you’re not thankful for anything else, be grateful that you got another day to live, love and laugh, or that you woke up today with the use of your legs. There’s a million and one things to be grateful for all around us, we just have to pull off our misery goggles to see them sometimes.
Day 7: Write a love letter to yourself
The biggest problem many of us face in the modern world is the lack of love we feel around us. Many of us look for love everywhere but internally, and getting caught up in this external validation can lead you down some really negative spirals. If we want to be loved passionately and unabashedly, we have to give ourselves that love, and that can start with doing something as simple as writing a love letter to the person we are inside and out.
No one knows us as well as we know ourselves. No one knows the depth of the strength and beauty that flows within us but ourselves. Use that knowledge to craft the ultimate love letter to yourself, and don’t hold back on your best qualities, skills you bring to the world and all the great and wonderful things that you deserve from this life.
This simple practice can help open up your mind and your heart, and is a great way to close out a week of looking inward to find the love we’re craving. You can also write a letter to that poor, broken inner-child and let her know that it’s safe for the two of you to set out on a new and beautiful journey of self-discovery together. No one is capable of loving you like yourself, and no one can transform that broken child like you can.
Putting it all together…
Learning how to love ourselves can be one of the hardest skills we learn in live, but it’s also one of the most beautiful and fulfilling. Learning how to love ourselves empowers us to make better choices for both us and the world around us, and it also helps us to accept who we are on the inside and the inside. When you figure out that the love you’re seeking comes from within, rather than without, you can transform your life and the circumstances in which you find yourself — and you can get a powerful start on that in just 7 days.
Take the first day to craft a mindful meditation practice that works for you, and really focus on listening to your emotions and what makes you tick. On the next day, start putting yourself first and follow that up with a day filled with practices that can help you begin that radical self-acceptance you need to tap into your authentic happiness. The next step is self-care and learning how to give yourself the time and space you need to rest and recalibrate. To round out the week, start defining what true happiness means to you, practice some gratitude and write a love letter to yourself. By adding simple little steps like this each and every day, you’ll fall in love with who you are in no time flat. No one else is responsible for your happiness but you, so what choice are you going to make today? Happiness or misery? It’s time to step up to the plate.
