Give Yourself Time, But Give Yourself Love Too
We go throughout our days without ever giving ourselves a few minutes to see how we’re doing. Emotional ignorance can sometimes be a survival tactic at a specific moment, but it’s a very unhealthy habit if you want to be healthy.
To fight this temptation, there’s no better medicine than to giving yourself time, and it needs to be quality time. It should be the kind that leaves a good taste in your mouth.
One of the best ways to do that is to give yourself love: small doses of daily love. You’ll start to connect with your inner self. Read on and learn some practical ways to love yourself.
Learning to give yourself love
We give our love to other people almost every day. But we have a bad habit of forgetting ourselves. Yet there’s no better support system for happy relationships and personal well-being than self-love. Can you imagine a better investment?
If you give yourself love in small doses, you’ll be fostering healthy self-esteem. We can define self-esteem as the positive attitude we have towards ourselves. It encourages us to think, feel, and act in the most self-satisfactory way possible. If you want to give yourself love, read on.
- Learning about yourself. This first aspect is fundamental. Each one of us is limited edition. Learning you strengths and weaknesses will help you figure out where to invest more time and energy. And don’t forget that we’re constantly changing, so we’ll never stop discovering new things about ourselves.
- Accepting yourself unconditionally. Accepting yourself means acknowledging yourself. Doing it unconditionally means doing it no matter what our limitations are and what situation we’re in. You don’t want to turn into your own worst enemy.
- Respecting and valuing yourself. The greatest support you have is your own, as long as you respect yourself. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind that you’re not just a collection of your failures, but also a collection of your victories. If you have to criticize yourself it should at least be in a constructive way. You’ve done more good than you think…
- Considering your full potential. Beyond what you’ve achieved there’s a whole world of possibilities. You’re constantly changing, so learning to make the most out of change is the goal. The saying about how you’re never too old to learn must be famous for a reason…
- Building good relationships. Having healthy relationships with others will help you get into good habits and make you happy. There’s nothing better than being with people who make you feel peace.
- Working on your health and happiness. Focusing on how to be happy is fundamental, but always as long as we remember that sometimes it’s good to delay short-term gratification for long-term. In this case happiness is more than just balance. It’s about intelligently making choices based on the time and circumstances.
- Paying attention to your needs. It’s impossible to be healthy and happy without paying attention to what you need, whether physically or psychologically. That’s why you have to stop and reflect on how you’re doing.
Invest in quality time
When you’ve learned how to give yourself love, you can truly spend quality time on yourself and others. Because a few minutes when you’re truly present are worth more than thousands of hours when you’re absent-minded and disconnected.
“Time isn’t gold, because gold is worth nothing. Time is life.”
-José Luis Sampedro-
You can start by setting aside part of your day to check in on yourself. Time to ask yourself how you’re doing, if you’re on the right path to achieving your goals, or if you need a short break to disconnect from the jumble of thoughts piled up in your mind. It’s about giving yourself time to relax and find peace.
An exercise that might be helpful is deep breathing. It’s a pretty straightforward activity: try to breathe only 10 times a minute. At first it’ll be hard because you’re used to doing it around 16 or 17 times a minute, but you’ll get it with practice. A deep breathing habit will also help you center yourself in the present and not bury it under a mountain of constant worry.
Another option is to dedicate time in your week to doing something you like. You won’t just be having good time. It’s also a way to give yourself love and attention.
Lastly, we shouldn’t forget that if you don’t give yourself love and time, you won’t be able to give it to anyone else. So set aside time in your schedule to give yourself love. That way you’ll be ready to give the people around you the greatest gift — your love.
