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4 Weeks of Self Love Challenge
If it is not evident by now, I love a challenge. Always have, I believe it creates accountability. But why have I chosen Self Love out of all of my personal development segments I cover? I feel like at the moment, with summer coming up and we’ve had a nice but weird winter. Everyone is struggling with their self love and it is a constant battle.
So I want to start a discussion about Self Love. Everyone’s first instinctive reactions are negative. It’s bad to love yourself or that it is dirty in some way (we aren’t going to go into That kind of self love but get to it! Love your whole self, including your sacral chakra!)
I’ll start by telling you a story about a phone call I received from my sister one day. She was at university and we had all being going through a bit of a rough time. Her with her friends and me with my mindset, I had been struggling with my self love, body issues will always get to me. It is so easy to fall into the trap of hating yourself. Anyway she rang me and she said to me.
HEY JADE, I HAVE A MASSIVE PROBLEM.
And I was like OH GOD WHAT! How can I help? WHAT IS THIS PROBLEM THAT WARRANTS A PHONE CALL!!
Then she said to me. Not enough people at the gym are complimenting my butt.
That was her biggest issue and it is a serious issue. She has a really good butt. Like a really good butt and it was being overlooked while everyone else butts were being rated.
Hilarious.
This kind of behavior is typical in our family because we promote self love. Self love is a difficult concept for most people because it has such negative connotations. To love yourself is arrogant, grandiose, conceited, selfish and just plain wrong. Or, if you love yourself, you will lose that drive to improve, that drive to work hard to be better that self hatred has fueled all these years.
At some point in your life, someone told you that you weren’t good enough and you took that energy and turned it into fuel or into fire. Fuel to be better so they would find you worthy or fire to burn yourself with.
But here we are, still kinda alive, still at the place you are right now. The only difference is, you are a little bit unhappy, never satisfied. You avoid looking in the mirror or at your bank balance. You skirt around conversations where your “Flaws” could come up and people would notice you’re a total fraud.
You aren’t a total fraud. But you are being an idiot. Let me try and explain/
Everything you do, think, see, breathe, smell and create is a choice. You don’t think it’s in your control but pretty much all of your life is in your control. You control what you smell, see, listen to, breathe. You make the choices to live where you live, hang out where you hang out, read what you read.
And it doesn’t feel like it, but you are choosing to support an environment of self hate. It isn’t Deborah fault that shes really skinny and that makes you feel insecure. You are reading negative things on Facebook, watching the news, gossiping about other people and liking quotes that say “Don’t have my life together, drinking wine all weekend and broke #YOLO”.. Like if you relate to any of those quotes. You need help, stat.
You choose to support a self hating environment, but here is where you are not an idiot. It’s everywhere. It’s so easy to be caught into the trap of self hate because the world loves giving you reasons why you should.
…Or does it?
Just think for a second. You are comparing yourself to someone else. That is where the first problem lies. You can’t compare yourself to anyone because you are 100% Unique. 1000% UNIQUE. Even if you had a twin sister, there is no one like you and there never will be. So you logically cannot compare yourself to anyone else. So Stop Doing It! Just stop.
Activity
Say to yourself, Hey Myself, I know that Carla is living my dream of becoming a baker but she is 10 steps ahead of me, that doesn’t make me less worthy.
You are on your own time, You don’t have to be married at 21, have babies at 25 and live happily ever after, that bullshit has long since gone. Your life. Your Timeline. You can take as long as you like getting to where you want to go.
Okay, so you have stopped comparing yourself to other people, lets have a quick chat about these “flaws” that you have.
Lets go through mine:
I am extremely Private. I take feedback poorly if it’s something I am really passionate about. I literally can’t eat without making a mess all over my jumper. I am not “skinny”, I am a solid UK size 10. I am greedy, I will literally eat until I explode.
These are some of my “flaws”. Have you noticed that none of them are really that big of a deal? Yes, I am a bit messy and a bit greedy but I can curb that. But I love my damn self for all of my flaws, I view them as positives as best I can or I work on my weaknesses. I am now much better at taking feedback, I am working on being less private, I love my body as it is and the greed thing is easily curbed as long as Jacob isn’t around to encourage me.
I watched an episode of Glee once and I heard a line that struck me really hard, (they were talking about boob jobs) and she said “If you don’t like something about yourself, change it”
Just like that I went. Bam. She’s right, if I am unhappy with a quality I possess, I can just change it. But what if it’s something I can’t change or would feel uncomfortable getting surgery for? (I’ve secretly always wanted a nose job but as soon as I say it all my friends tell me how great my nose is) Then I would have to just accept it and stop going “OMG My nose is too Roman I hate it”. So I accepted my nose and worked on improving how greedy I am.
Activity
What I want you to do, is find all the flaws you think you have. Write them all down. Then turn them into positives.
Yes, I have a shopping problem, but I will never run out of jars of jam now will I?
Then I want you draw a line in the sand and say, I used to be like this flaw that I dislike in myself. But I am committed to being better and I am getting better everyday.
Or say to yourself. HEY! THIS IS WHO I DAMN AM AND IF ANYONE’S GOT A PROBLEM WITH ME THEY CAN SUCK IT BECAUSE I ACCEPT MYSELF FOR WHO I AM. WORTS AND ALLLLLL. Preferably if you could bellow this out loud at a garden gnome, it would be ideal.
So we have gone over the reasons you hate yourself and how to accept them or change them and giving way too many shits about what people think of you and how you are going to stop comparing yourself to them.
Now we get on the final activity. This is a 4 week program. Everyday we are going to do 1 thing to promote self love. The checklist will help you with ideas but it can be as simple as, saying, I love me. And then playing I love me by Meghan Trainor and singing along.
I will post everyday for a little reminder. All you have to do is commit to making the change to stop hating yourself and love yourself.
Your life is all about your mindset. Do you see sour lemons or do you see the potential to open up a lemonade stand and make millions?
Look for the lemonade stand. Love yourself. Work on it.
See you back on Instagram!