Love You! Own It & Mean It

It's time to treat yourself with more respect. You do your best all day, every day and that is all anyone can do. Every day you need to get up, show up and be the best you that you can be.
I didn't always understand this concept. I used to think that things happened to me instead of me reacting to things. I didn't realise a lot of it was in my mindset. I thought that bad things happened to me for whatever reason, but now I understand that life is made up of choices. We choose how we talk to ourselves, we choose how to look at and react to situations, and we choose what goals we set for ourselves and how we go about achieving our goals.
I learned it was more about having a positive mindset and understanding who I was and owning that person. I am the girl that wears way too much light pink, laughs way too loud at toilet humour, has a dirty mind, loves cuddling and knows I'm a unique soul. I am also amazing. I can say these things and not feel nervous that I will be judged because I am who I am.
Today, I am challenging you to be more mindful of how you treat yourself. It's about learning to accept yourself for who you are. There are different activities you can do to start loving yourself more and owning who you are.

Talk nicely to yourself, about yourself.

We all talk to ourselves, and that's ok. I’m wanting to focus more on what we are saying. We talk to ourselves more than anyone else. We should be our own best friend. Think about your daily conversations with yourself. Is your self-talk positive or negative?
Are your conversations about reaching your dreams and how you are currently growing as a person? Do you talk to yourself about accomplishing what you want to achieve your goals?  Or are you yelling at yourself or the people around you because things aren't going your way? Are you disappointed in yourself for not doing what you set out to do for the day? Are you going to bed frustrated because you didn’t get to do what you wanted to do?
Next time you are having a conversation with yourself, stop and think about what it is you are saying and why. Ask yourself these simple questions:
Are you talking in a positive or negative light?
How are you feeling from the conversation, are you happy, energetic, sad or angry?
How did the conversation get to where it is?
If you notice this happening, don’t get frustrated with yourself. Accept that it has happened, stop the conversation and tell yourself something nice. It could be anything from how you look, how you feel or simply remember the last time you did something fun or laughed.
If your self-talk is not positive, you can learn to swap the negative thoughts to positive thoughts with daily exercises. You can start every morning by telling yourself something that you are proud of yourself for achieving, tell yourself something you love about yourself or tell yourself you love you when looking in the mirror.
Learn to tell yourself why you love yourself and mean it. Self-love could happen today, or it could happen over time starting with the simple daily exercises to get you started.
Self-love is a state of mind, and it takes practice to get there and stay there. Being on this journey is ok. It takes time, and the biggest hurdle is to start.

Smile at yourself and strangers

Start to notice how many people are smiling at any moment during the day. It is interesting to see who is smiling and who isn’t. When you walk through the shops or around the office at work, are people smiling?
By thinking about if people are smiling, will make you put on a bigger smile. Watch the reactions you get from people you walk past while you are smiling. Watch your families reaction if you spend the night smiling at everyone. Not in a creepy, freaky way, but in a genuinely happy, smiling way. People will generally brighten up and smile back creating a happier atmosphere.
Which brings me to a term that makes me laugh. I think we all know the saying, 'resting bitch face'. Yes? If you catch yourself in this position change it up - smile. Practice your inner smile. If you are sitting at your desk and need to take a quick break and stop or a moment to take a breathe, stretch and turn on an inner smile.
An inner smile is merely a smile on the inside. To turn on an inner smile focus on your mouth. Are your teeth clenched? Put some room in between your teeth. Relax your tongue in your mouth. Now from the inside of your mouth, turn the outside of your mouth up into a smile. This may show on the outside, or you might be the only one that knows about your inner smile.
If you are smiling, it is contagious, and the people around you will start smiling to which in turn will make you smile more.
Smiling will have a flow-on effect on your thoughts. It's not easy to say negative things about yourself when you are smiling. Smiling also helps to keep calm, boost your mood, lowers blood sugar and create an atmosphere for laughter.

Give yourself and others compliments and mean them.

If you say nice things to other people, it makes it easier to say nice things to yourself about yourself.
To start this exercise, give three people complements during the day and mean them. If you don't often give compliments, it can be challenging to provide yourself with compliments first so start giving compliments to others.
Receiving a compliment is often harder than giving one. We are our own worst critics, and sometimes we can refute a compliment instead of saying thank you. By arguing against a compliment, our mindset goes into a self-judgement mode instead of having a euphoric moment from a compliment. By giving others compliments and seeing their reactions can help make it easier to give and receive compliments yourself.

The past is in the past, so there is no use dwelling on it. You can get anxious when you think about the future too much because you aren't there yet. Try and stay in the present moment. Be who you are right now, love yourself for being you and don't apologise for it. Shifting your thoughts to love yourself is a powerful thing. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen overnight, and like anything worth it, it takes time. If it wasn't worth it, it would be easy. You can be slowly changing into the person you desire to become, a happier and healthier version of you and that's great. Still be the you that you are today.

What are you going to work on this week to get up, show up and rock who you are? Leave a comment below and let me know.