I talk a lot about self love. In fact, as a love coach, I think it’s the foundation for being able to have meaningful, loving relationships with others. I believe in this so much that I created a Self Love Formula – call it the logic-loving ex-lawyer in me, but these steps work.
And not only do they work, but they are essential. We are in the midst of a new revolution, and it’s easy to get burned out. But the world needs you at your best. It’s time to include self love in our plan to change the world.
So what does self love look like in action? Here’s a little introduction to my formula.
When I talk about self love, I mean it as a verb – really taking loving action towards yourself, even if you’re not feeling it yet. By doing this consistently, your feelings can catch up with your actions, and you can feel that love for yourself.
We often talk about self love in a general way – but if you don’t know how to love yourself, that’s not very helpful.
So I’ve broken it down into five different elements:
1. Self Compassion
Self compassion is the ability to give yourself a break – to have compassion towards yourself. We are all deserving of compassion, but so many of us judge ourselves or can’t forgive ourselves for past mistakes. The key is to give yourself a break. Think of it this way: up until this point, you’ve done the best you could with the resources, beliefs, and tools you had. But if you want to do better in the future, give yourself a break so that you can move forward taking better action. When you beat yourself up, you stay stuck.
Here’s an example. It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the middle of a revolution – you may feel like you’re not doing enough for racial justice if you’re not marching in the streets everyday and hitting the pavement. But judging yourself is not productive. Release judgement for what you should be doing and ask yourself, “What can I do moving forward?”
2. Self Worth
This is a big one. It’s nearly impossible to grow up in our culture and not have self worth issues, especially if you are Black. But really – everyone has self worth issues! We have a worthiness crisis in our culture because we are fed messages throughout our whole lives that we need all these outside things to be good enough – what you have, what you do, your clothes, if you’re single, if you have money, the list goes on…and on…and on. All of these things make their way into our psyche, so we are always striving to be good enough.
We are all born worthy and deserving of love, abundance, purpose, health, fulfillment, and success. Here’s an exercise I love, which I’ll bring up a few times: think of a child in your life. What did that child have to do to be worthy of love, respect, abundance, and fulfillment? Nothing! Just by being born, you’re worthy.
So if you struggle with this, you can start to treat yourself as if you were worthy (remember, it’s about taking action, even if you don’t actually feel that way yet). Think, “If I did believe that I was worthy, what would I do right now?”
And there’s not always a perfect answer – sometimes it means saying no to people, sometimes it means taking a new action you haven’t taken before. Maybe it’s just showing up as your authentic self, instead of bending yourself to fit someone else’s mold.
This is constant practice – always asking, “Are my actions in alignment with the worthiness I want to feel?” If not, it’s up to you to take baby steps to make it happen.
3. Self Validation
Self validation is the ability to give yourself credit where credit is due. It’s acknowledging your accomplishment when you take that baby step – maybe it’s setting a boundary with someone, or maybe you stop overworking and start saying no. A lot of Black women in particular have this feeling that we have to work harder than everyone else and prove ourselves all the time.
Start asking, “Who told me I had to work 10 times as much as everyone else? Who told me I had to take on everyone else’s projects so I could seem like a team player?” Maybe in reality, what it takes for you to do your job is 70% of what you’ve been doing.
So if you do start to create more boundaries and treat yourself as more worthy, give yourself the credit for doing so! If we do anything that’s hard, we deserve credit. If we try, we deserve credit! The only way to build confidence is by doing things that are hard and then giving ourselves credit. Then it becomes easier the next time, and the next time, and the next time.
Let’s look at our example of a child again. If you love a child and they start taking their first steps or first words, you encourage them and validate them – you don’t say, “Well it’s about time you started doing that!” The more that we can learn to self-validate, the less dependent we are on outside approval – and the less time we spend looking for validation somewhere else. This is the most important thing for having healthy relationships with people, where we’re not looking for validation.
4. Self Care
Self care is a big topic – in fact, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. Many people will sell you products under the guise of self care, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when I talk about self care, I mean asking yourself, “How do I want to feel?” And then, ask yourself “What action or actions can I take to support myself in feeling that way?”
Like with self worth, there is no perfect answer, but it’s about opening yourself up and brainstorming. If you feel helpless or disempowered, how would you rather feel? Empowered? Like you have some control over what’s going on in your life? Well, what are the actions you can take that will support you in doing that? If you’re judging yourself for not getting out to a protest, maybe the action you can take is as simple as having a tough conversation.
See how these different elements of self love all come together? Give yourself the compassion to allow yourself to protest in your own way. If you’re feeling down about not being able to get out there, assess what action you can take so that you don’t feel that way – that’s the self care part. And then after you’ve had that uncomfortable conversation with someone (just based on our example above), give yourself credit for doing something difficult. That’s validation.
Another big part of self care is saying no and having boundaries. Looking around you and seeing what in your life supports you in how you want to feel, and what doesn’t. Sometimes self care is eliminating things, like watching the news all the time, or falling asleep scrolling Twitter. Maybe it means an hour before going to bed you’re going to turn off the TV and disconnect from social media. Start to be curious about how that looks for you in your life.
Self care is about being empowered to take the actions that you need to take, in order to support yourself in feeling how you want to feel.
5. Self Gratitude
Self gratitude is when you are truly grateful for the person that you are. Take away your accomplishments, material possessions, job, and education – who are you fundamentally? What is in your heart? Are you empathetic? Courageous? Resilient? Creative? Loving? There are so many things that make you truly you – and having nothing to do with outside appearance, what you’ve done, or what you have. Challenge yourself by asking, “What about who I am, and who I get to be in this lifetime, can I be grateful for right now?”
If the idea of being grateful for yourself is foreign concept for you, start small. Think of one thing about yourself that you can be grateful for right now. Allow yourself to sit with that gratitude – that’s how it grows.
So let’s recap: self love is comprised of self compassion, self worth, self validation, self care, and self gratitude. The more that you practice these steps, the deeper you will grow in your feeling of self love. And the more that you love yourself, not only is your life better, but it has a ripple effect on the people in your life.
Imagine a world where everyone you cared about truly loved themselves, was able to be compassionate to themselves, saw themselves as worthy, etc. Imagine how amazing and revolutionary that would be. That’s the world that I want to live in.
The world needs you to love yourself and take good care of yourself. You are what we need to see the change that we want to see in this world. You’ve got to be revolution ready, on the inside, so you can make the changes that you want in the world on the outside. You deserve it.