Grow Your Self-Love with these Simple Tips

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

You’re probably receiving 782 Valentines-related messages today and I don’t normally craft my messages around specific days (I’m counter-culture like that) but I thought it would be weird to totally ignore it, so here’s another to add to your virtual pile. 

Seeing as how we’re celebrating love today, I thought it would be beneficial to share one of the ways I’ve built up my self-love over the years.

Although I’ve always seemed to be pretty happy from an outside perspective, for many years my inner world was very different.

There was a whole lot of critiquing going on in my mind. Judging myself was just a way of life. I was oh-so-very-hard on myself. The kicker is that I didn’t even know that I was doing it. There was no awareness and so I was really leading this dual life - happy and positive to others, mean and demanding to myself. It certainly took a lot of energy.

The worlds of personal development and spirituality drew me in and I started to learn things. 

Things like: 

• You are not your thoughts
• You can choose how you treat yourself
• You can be nice to yourself!
• If you’re not pouring love into yourself, the love you’re giving others isn’t as good as you think it is
• If you’re thinking something that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, it’s a lie

Monumental stuff!

Self-Love is a wonderful concept and there are so many parts to it. To me, one of the most valuable aspects is putting self-love into action. You actually have to do things to cultivate great energy and it’s important to do it every day. I mean, why wouldn’t you spend a small amount of time every day in honour of love and the energy that created you?

If you’re too busy to do that, then you’re probably just too busy. Period.

When we get our priorities straight, everything else falls into place with way less effort.

One of the ways I choose to cultivate everyday, no matter what, is meditating. For many years I had an on again off again relationship with meditating until one day, I just decided that it’s as important as breathing. I made an agreement with myself that I would do it every single day, no matter what. And I’ve kept that promise to myself. 

It takes practice to build up integrity with yourself. It takes time to trust that when you say you’re going to do something for yourself that you’ll do it. That’s self love. And it can happen in baby steps. As long as you’re doing something every day to cultivate self-love, it will continue to grow. 

What agreement can you make with yourself? What are you willing to do to cultivate great energy and to honour the vast and unconditional love that’s already flowing through you?

Maybe it’s meditation. Maybe it’s speaking to yourself nicely. Maybe it’s going for a walk in nature every day. Maybe it’s dancing. Choose something and practice being in integrity to yourself. 

If you could use a little support to make it super easy, check out the Christina Recommends section below. I’m sharing a short meditation this week that’s uber-powerful.

On this day of love, in this month of love, I encourage you to take daily action, no matter how small, to cultivate and honour the brilliant and magnificent energy that you’re made of and to pour love into yourself by doing so. It’s the most important thing.

With waterfalls of love and mountains of courage,

Christina

>Creator of Courageous Self-Care

>Lover of myself (and cookies)

>Much nicer to be around now that I love myself

Over the last 15 years, I’ve become a connoisseur of the daily practices and rituals that make the most impact for the least amount of time invested. 

To make it easy for clients to know what to do and when, I created the Self-Care Resource Centre. It’s a series of instructional done-with-you videos and audios that takes all the guesswork out of self-care. All you have to do is press play and follow along. 

For the next month, I’ll be giving you free access to several of the practices; a new one each week. Hooray!

This week’s practice is called the Inside Outside Meditation

Use this guided meditation to connect with your physical body and the infinite energy of the Universe. In under 10 minutes, you'll feel relaxed, refreshed and realigned with your inner power. Now that’s a great use of your time!

Click here to access the Inside Outside Meditation. It will be available until next week.