Building Self Confidence | 3 Steps to Self Love

Self love is something that many people struggle with throughout their lives. Women especially, find self acceptance to be a challenge in a world that is constantly sending them the message that they are too fat or not pretty enough or not smart enough or spend too much money on shoes! Through all the noise the world throws at us, we must learn to listen to our inner voice and drown out the external crap! One excellent way to understand your positive qualities or learn to accept your not no positive qualities is through affirmations. Telling yourself everyday that you are a beautiful and unique person, or that you have an opinion that matters in this world is a very powerful tool to increase your self love and self awareness.

So, today’s post is going to walk you through identifying the areas in your life that need highlighting, creating your own self love speak, and keeping up with the self love talk as a daily reminder of your awesomeness!

Step 1: Identifying the Opportunity for Self Love

Do you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself often? Do you get embarrassed to do things or wear things or say things because you think others will put you down for it? Well, the first step to giving yourself the love you deserve is to identify those things you are afraid to do and understand what the issue is behind it. Do you perhaps not like to wear short sleeves in public because you don’t like the way your arms look? Well, thats a body image issue, particularly pinpointed at your arms. Are you afraid to give your opinion on an issue at school or at work or with your friends, afraid that you will say something that sounds dumb? That’s a confidence issue aimed right at your intellect. Spend some time thinking about what you are afraid or hesitant to say or do and identify the root of the issue. Once you have the root or roots (because most people have more than one issue) you can move on to step two.

Step 2: Sweet Talking Yourself

Once you have identified the sensitive issues in your life that you want to work on, write them down in a notebook or on a piece of paper and sit or stand in front of a mirror. Imagine that you didn’t have the issue and you were the positive mirror image of it. If your issue is that you have a problem with your body weight, imagine yourself at your goal weight and with the body of your dreams. Imagine that version of yourself looking back at you in the mirror. What would you say to that person? Give that person every compliment you can think of, every positive thought you wish you could give yourself if only your flaws were wiped away. Write down all those compliments in your notebook.

Step 3: Read the Writing on the Wall

At this point, you should have a page or pages of compliments that you gave your positive mirror image self. Reread through these compliments and find two or three that really stand out and strike a chord with you. Then, take out a bright shade of lipstick or a dry erase marker and write those compliments on your mirror. Condense the wording if you need to, combine them to get them to fit, but pen those words directly in front of you on that mirror and leave them there. Everyday when you go to that mirror to put on your makeup or evaluate yourself, you will be face to face with that positive mirror image of yourself in words. Read your compliments everyday as often as you can. Read them when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night. Eventually, you will start to believe what you are reading!

 xoxo,

This post originally appeared on Strange & Charmed on August 18th, 2014 and is being reposted for your enjoyment!