Unlocking the Power of Self Love & Positive Psychology

Self-love is a practice of caring for and having positive regard for yourself – accepting and valuing yourself as a whole, your strengths and indeed, your weaknesses. Self love encompasses treating yourself with kindness, compassion and understanding, as you would treat someone you love dearly.

The main components of self love:

Self love means accepting yourself for who you are – faults and all. And that is not I am who I am and I will never change, there are always ways to learn and grow, its more about how you think about and treat yourself. It looks like forgiving yourself when you make mistakes and speaking kindly to yourself with an overall positive view of yourself. Fostering comparison and grace for yourself, even if your most difficult of moments.

Loving yourself can increase your motivation to reach life goals, like the ones we put off until later. We can even use this tool to help overcome procrastination. How you feel about, treat and talk to yourself is connected to your mental health. A self-liking brain is important for emotional regulation and handling stress.

Self love is about building a healthy and balanced relationship with yourself which leads to increased resilience, improved mental well being and a greater ability to cope with life’s challenges. It does require patience and practice, but results in significant personal growth and improvements in health and happiness.

Try it: Self love journaling helps to increase those positive feelings about yourself and develop more compassion for yourself. You learn to truly care for and appreciate yourself. Use the prompt: I love this about myself… I will love on myself today by…

Positive psychology:

In the beginning, positive psychology focused mainly on pursuing rewarding experiences that made people feel more joyful. But psychologists soon realized this sort of happiness depends on fleeting experiences, rather than a more enduring sense of contentment. As a result, this thinking shifted to concentrate on cultivating satisfaction and well-being but staying open to the full range of emotional experiences, both good and bad. No spiritual bypassing here! Accepting and valuing all that is within you, as a whole experience, not labeling good or bad. This is the ultimate practice in self love.

Positive psychology is not about denying or ignoring difficult emotions. It’s about opening to what is happening here and now, and cultivating and savoring the good in your life. They may also help you develop the resilience to handle difficulties more easily, and bounce back more rapidly after traumatic or unpleasant events.

Try it:

• Be more mindful in your every day – slow it down and acknowledge small steps mindlessly take on everyday tasks, notice every step of making tea, or even washing dishes, feeling every action and appreciating each piece as a necessary part of the whole.

• Share some kindness – with yourself and others. How can you be kinder to yourself today?

• Practice gratitude – appreciate one small thing every day, whether that is something about yourself or the world around you that helps nourish and enrich your life.

Try these steps to unlock the power of self love and positive psychology and see how these small changes can make a big difference in your daily joy and happiness!

Be Well, Real Well,

Tracey xo