How to Boost Your Self-Love in 7 Easy Steps

Self-love is a very popular term, but it is not always well understood. Self-love is not an action, but rather a state in which you feel good about yourself. In this sense, it is important for your overall well-being. It influences the way you interact with others. It affects the image you project at work and the way you handle problems.

Self-love is a fundamental element for an individual well-being. But practicing self-love can be a challenge for many of us, especially during moments in which we face serious challenges. It is not about being narcissistic, but about getting in touch with yourself, with your well-being and your happiness.

What is self-love?

Self-love is not simply a state of feeling good that can be achieved by keeping up your image. Or through inspiring quotes or by spending quality time with your loved ones. Or even by delighting in the activities we enjoy in solitude. Despite how satisfying these and other activities may be, this is not self-love.

Self-love is a state of self-appreciation that grows from actions that support our physical and psychological health and stimulate our spiritual growth.

Self-love is dynamic. It grows through actions that make us mature. When we act in a way that we expand our self-love within us, we begin to better accept our weaknesses and strengths. Also, we feel less need to explain our deficiencies.

It makes us feel compassion for ourselves as human beings fighting to find personal meaning. This allows us to focus more on our purpose and our values. Ones which we hope to achieve through our own efforts.

“Love yourself first, and everything else will follow. You truly have to love yourself, in order to accomplish anything in this world.”
-Lucille Ball-

7 steps to boost our self-love

Remain alert and aware: People with greater self-love tend to know what they think, feel and desire. They are aware of who they are and put it into practice. They don’t behave according to what others want for or from them.
Act according to your needs, not your desires: Loving doesn’t mean granting other people’s wishes, but rather providing what they need. Loving yourself works under this same premise. Focusing on what you need will keep you away from patterns of automatic behaviors that are less healthy. These can bring you problems or keep you anchored to the past.

Practice good personal care: a way of loving yourself more is taking better care of your basic necessities. People who love themselves nurture themselves daily with healthy activities. This includes good nutrition, exercise, maintaining good sleeping habits, and healthy intimate and social interactions.
Establish limits: a person who loves themselves has the strength to establish limits and to say no to anything that affects them physically, emotionally or spiritually.
Protect yourself from toxic people: A person with self-love protects themselves from toxic people and doesn’t waste their time with people who try to poison their spirit.
Forgive yourself: We, as human beings, can be very hard on ourselves. But being responsible for our actions doesn’t imply that we have to punish ourselves eternally for these actions. People with self-love learn from their mistakes, accept their humility and forgive themselves.
Live with intention: In order to accept and love yourself more, staying aware of what happens in your life, it is good for you to at least have a purpose. If your intention is to live a meaningful and healthy life, you should make decisions that support this intention. This will allow you to feel good about and with yourself when you are successful in this purpose. You will have greater self-love if you see yourself achieve what you set out to do. Thus, in order to do this, you need to establish what your intentions are.

You can’t love another person more than you love yourself. Therefore, it’s a must that we learn to love ourselves, in order to be able to offer love to others.