Confessions of a Chocolate Hater

Ways to Love Yourself 1. Know yourself You cannot love someone you don’t even know. 2. Accept that you have strengths and weaknesses. You have skills and problems. Do a SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of yourself if you want but remember, opportunities and threats are external. You don’t have control over them. But you can use your strengths and improve on your weaknesses, both of which are internal, to handle the external. 3. Disliking certain things about yourself is normal. That gives room for improvement. Improve. Don’t be lazy and choose the path of self loathing. 4. Forgive yourself Understand that making mistakes is the way to grow. If you hadn’t fallen on your bum a couple hundred times you would have never learned to walk. If as a baby after one fall, after one mistake of breaking something, you would have decided to just sit in the corner and never try again, you would still be sitting there with the broken pieces. Don’t do that. Learn from your toddler self. Get up. And the only way you can do that is by forgiving yourself. 5. Accept that as of now you do not love yourself. Lying to yourself won’t eventually lead you to believe it as the truth. Lying to someone you love is not a way to love them. 6. Disregard what others say about you. So much of the good and bad they tell you really has more to do with themselves; their mindset and mood, their motives and interest. Don’t let people fill in blanks for you. That won’t lead to a happy ending, it won’t lead to a story you can call your own. 7. Be patient with yourself, be kind. Being hard on yourself is a really stupid thing to do. It isn’t productive, it isn’t one bit effective and it is completely unnecessary. 8. Discard the idea that you are breakable. Reject the concept that someone can leave you broken. They can hurt you, yes and they can cause you an immense amount of pain but they cannot break you. You aren’t made of glass. Give your cells a little more credit. Give your heart a little more of it too. 9. When you realize that the grass is greener on the other side, don’t draw up plans to ruin that grass or come up with a way where you can camp on it and abandon your own grass. Instead, take a trip to the shop to buy some fertilizer and tend to your own grass. Upskill yourself constantly. 10. Learn new things. Invest time and energy in things that interest you.You didn’t learn to play piano in school but always wished to? Who said there is an age limit. In most cases the saying, ‘it is never too late’ stands absolutely true. 11. Look yourself in the mirror. You can admire or just observe. Look into your eyes. Look at your reflection. Just look. Have a see in what’s inside. Don’t look away. Have the courage to see the truth. 12. Spend time with yourself. Buy yourself flowers if flowers are what you love. Don’t wait to meet the right person to do the things you always wanted to. Go star gazing, skinny dipping. Solo travel. Do whatever you want to and can. Write your future/past self a letter. Cook yourself a meal. Buy yourself some ice cream. Click goofy selfies. 13. Learn to accept compliments. Be graceful. All you have to do is say ‘thank you’. And please don’t feel the immediate need of returning the compliment. You don’t always have to give when you get. Especially when you don’t really have anything to give. A ‘thank you’ and a smile are more than enough. 14. Learn to be okay in silence. The voices in your head? They terrorize you, I know. But trust me, they go away. They go away if you face them. There are no demons in your head. These are just echoes of your fears and insecurities. Listen to them. Breathe deep. Know that they are weak. Face them head on. And then ask them to leave. 15. Accept your body. However it is or it isn’t. It has accepted you in every possible way. Accept it and see how it accepts you even more. Accepting doesn’t mean not changing something that you can in a healthy way. It only means that your love is unconditional. Your love is whole. And that is the only way to love yourself. Wholly.