Fall <back> in love with yourself

Everything so far this year has been pointing me towards the importance of self-care and self-love which are really expressions of that critical element of success: self-esteem.

Valentine’s Day seems an appropriate time to look at those concepts in a bit more depth because I can guarantee there is one person in your life worth falling back in love with: you.

I say ‘fall back’ because you were born in love with yourself and expecting love from others. Every baby is born believing that all they need to do is to cry out and, sooner or later, someone will come and meet their needs.

Sadly, experiences in life can all too easily chip away at this belief. The baby who thinks ‘Why wouldn’t everybody love me?’ grows into a teenager or adult who thinks ‘Why would anyone love me?’

“The real difficulty in self love is combating the inner critic who goes against our own wishes by challenging our own beliefs. You know you’re worthy of love, but the critic keeps reminding you of the past pain that you can’t let go of.”

What is self-love?

Self-love, self-worth, self-care… It doesn’t really matter what you call it, for me it all comes back to self-esteem.?

Some people mistakenly think this is confidence. But confidence is what you show the outside world and can be faked all day long.

Self-esteem is how you fundamentally feel about yourself.

One of the most common sentiments I hear from highly successful business clients is ‘People would be amazed if they knew I was sitting here talking about self-esteem with you. They all think I’m really confident.”

If your self-esteem is low, it stops you from going for that promotion, applying for that amazing job, making a killer presentation… all because you tell yourself that you’re not good enough.

Perhaps one of the greatest downfalls of low self-esteem is that it makes you constantly worried about what other people think. This can hold you back in all areas of your life.

If you want to make positive changes, a good place to start is by assessing your self-esteem. Taking an average of the last seven days, how do you really feel about yourself out of 10 (where 1 is rubbish and 10 is amazing)? If you’re not getting up to 8 very often, there’s room for improvement and if it’s under 5, you could probably do with some professional help to raise that score.

Why is self-esteem so important?

My experience as a therapist has brought me to the conclusion that self-esteem is the foundation to everything. It underpins the beliefs we hold about ourselves which, in turn, determines our thoughts and behaviour.

If you want to build a house, you have to make sure the foundations are solid first - otherwise cracks will appear in the walls.

It’s the same with self-esteem. If you don’t get that right first, often trying to fix other things won’t be successful.

That’s why I always start with self-esteem when working with my 1:1 Intensive Clients.

And the ripple effects of solving self-esteem issues are incredible.

I’ve even had clients completely change their relationship with food by realising that they are worth looking after.

How can you achieve high self-esteem and fall back in love with yourself?

There are loads of self-help resources around this topic: books, YouTube videos, inspirational podcasts, songs, and more. I recommend using any of these. In my experience though, the only way to really transform low self-esteem is to go to the root cause of where it came from.

It could be the way you were raised as a child, it could be from being made to feel stupid or different at school… Whatever the cause, that’s where you need to get to in order to change the limiting beliefs you’ve created.

Something you can do yourself though is the ‘I Am’ exercise.?

If you struggle to find a constructive word to put at the end of ‘I am…’? it’s likely to be an indication of low self-esteem. To create positive feelings about yourself, look in the mirror and say the words ‘I am’ followed by 7 different positive endings.

Here’s a few to try:

??I am talented

??I am kind

??I am loveable

??I am supportive

??I am amazing

??I am powerful

??I am brave

If you do this every day, even if you don’t believe the words to start with, your mind will start to accept them and your self-esteem will grow.

Give it a try and see how it feels (I’d love to know).

Take it from me, you have always been loveable and you always will be loveable. So use today as the catalyst to start falling back in love with yourself.

I promise you, this is the most important love you will ever experience in your life. Plus, if you love yourself, you are always in good company!

Be kind to yourself?

Kate?

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If you have a teenager in the house and there’s not much evidence of self-love (for either of you) taking this Teenage Anxiety Checker will help identify what’s going on. It’s free, easy and you will receive practical support based on your answers.