Being Your Own Valentine Every Day

With Valentine’s Day having been and gone for another year, I started to think more about self-love. Sure, Valentine’s Day is a nice excuse to show someone how much you love them, and there’s no denying that it is nice having this feeling reciprocated. But why don’t we show ourselves that we love ourselves?

I read a quote on Instagram that really stood out to me…
 
‘If I were to ask you to list the things you love, how long would it take for you to say yourself?’
 
When I actually thought about what my answer would be to this question, I was horrified to admit that I wouldn’t even think to say ‘myself’ if someone asked me that. I would be listing things like sunny days, sushi, my dog, flowers and my boyfriend.
 
How is it that we don’t think of ourselves as someone/something to love, even though we are someone else’s someone to love?

​I decided to change this for myself. Every day since Valentines Day I have started my morning with my usual routine; yoga, a short meditation, a cup of green tea or a glass of kombucha and a healthy breakfast. But I’ve added something that has improved each day immensely. I’ve added in some ‘self-love mantra’s’.

Basically, each morning in the midst of my usual, calming yet energizing start to the day, I’ve included a few minutes of self-love practice. At first it was weird, I’m not going to lie about that, but seriously, I am loving myself so much right now. And it feels AMAZING!
 
What I’ve come up with is this:

Spend a few minutes in front of the mirror and keep strong eye contact with yourself. Now tell yourself things you love about yourself or just that you love you! You can say this in your head to start off with but saying it out loud is so much more effective so try and work towards that.
 
You can say almost anything positive about you, but the most important part is you always look yourself straight in the face and always smile!! Your mind remembers things that are attached to emotion so if you tell yourself you love you with a big smile on your face and say it like you mean it, your mind will back you 100% because it believes it (even if you don’t just yet).
 
Sometimes you won’t even need to speak. Sometimes you can just look at yourself with a grin and after a minute of feeling a bit weird for just smiling at yourself like a weirdo, your mind just let’s go of judgement and any negative thoughts. It’s like a weight off your shoulders.

Once you’ve got the hang of starting your morning with some self lovin’, get used to complimenting yourself throughout the day. I literally pep talk myself all the time.
 
‘God yes Georgia, you nailed that workout you fit thannnng!’
‘Wow babe! That was actually a really good way to handle that situation!’
‘Your singing in the shower voice is like the voice of an angel... Please sing louder next time!’
 
And so on.
 
I am now my own best friend and not only do I feel like I can do anything with just me by my side, I also feel like I can love and help others even better now. I honestly feel like I have more to give. 
 
At the end of the day, we are unique and ourselves all the way through, for our whole life. We will be with ourselves for longer than anyone else will be so why go through life not being completely and utterly in love with yourself?
 
Do you boo, I promise you won’t regret it.
 
Having said all of this, you may already practice self-love in your own way which I think is amazing! I have so much respect and admiration for people who put themselves first and make sure they are happy little humans before worrying about everyone else around them (which I think can lead you to burn out so fast and forget about your own needs…. Not good).
 
I would love to hear any other self-love tips and tricks you have so please feel free to leave a comment on this post and we can get talking about L.O.V.E’ing ourselves 24/7.

PS. I would like to acknowledge that my singing in the shower voice maybe isn't quite like the voice of an angel, but I like to think that it is.
 
Georgia x