Forget about everyone else, learn to love yourself first
Love is one of the most wonderful, annihilating, fun, soul crushing, crazy and emotionally rewarding concepts there is. But let’s park Valentine’s Day and all the crappy red satin ribbon, roses and teddy bears. We are here to talk about one thing… Self Love. And as Meatloaf would sing “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that”, because loving yourself is so much harder to do than loving someone else.
How do I love myself? Who the fu#k knows right?
Well… I asked Julie Tenner (who is a super fabulous intimacy and relationship coach) if she had some tips for self-love and ways to connect with yourself as a priority over all others. Because let’s accept that being able to love yourself makes you powerful, but it’s also hard and awkward and quite frankly it makes me feel a bit silly and weird. For the sake of my own self-healing, I’ll put that aside for now.
(image source Julietenner.love)
Here are some self-love tips from Jules…
1. Send yourself your own love-notes. Deep breaths are like little love-notes to your body, and time is like cupid shooting moments at you for reflection.
👉 Throughout the day, send your self some personalised love. Remind yourself what you are fabulous for and compliment yourself. Don’t let that inner voice take control and tell you otherwise.
👉 Take a few minutes to breathe a little deeper than you are right now. Just for a moment, stop, then breathe to help you re-centre. Or, better yet, ask your body what type of breath it needs right now - and give it.
2. You don’t have to go hard or go home. Approach your body, your heart, your lady bits with gentleness and worthiness.
👉 Give yourself time each day - go as fast as the slowest part of you and you’ll end up in love with what unfolds and be present to it as it does 💗
👉 Blast love out and feel it come back to you ten-fold ♥️ don’t wait for someone else to decide when and how and how much you love - when you go first the universe responds - that’s the law of attraction. Send 5 texts to 5 people telling them exactly what you love about them and what impact they’ve had on your life.
👉 Get a self-love rose quartz wand, instead of batteries. Learning to love yourself comes from you alone and the connectedness you have to every part of yourself.
2. Involve your whole body and increase your pleasure. Ecstatic moments don’t come from your mind or from the 5% of you you’re unconsciously in touch with. Learn to be in touch with as much of yourself as you can be, using the moments and interactions that matter to you most to do so.
👉 Each area of your body you touch is involved in whatever you do next, whatever is not touched is left out 😢. Think about the areas of your body you are ignoring and focus on re-connecting with those.
If you want to hear more from Jules you can catch a podcast on spotify - just do a search for Nourishing The Mother. And of course, pop over to Instagram and follow her here.
So, forget about who is sending you a valentine, loving yourself should be your number one priority to help re-build the parts of you that are broken, to allow connections to be made between yourself and others, to understand your vulnerabilities and use those to forge a path of emotional success.