21 Powerful Self-Love Habits You Need To Try
Self-love habits are something that can help you to expand in all areas of your life. The more you feel good about yourself, the more your outside world will respond to your energy.
You may feel like your toughest critic right now. It’s normal to go through ups and downs in regards to how you feel about yourself.
However, if you find you are in a funk and feeling more down than up lately, these powerful self-love habits will get you back on track so that you can start feeling good again.
What Is Self-Love?
Self-love is loving who you are, valuing who you are, and generally feeling good about the person that you are.
Self-love isn’t just about loving your external reflection but truly loving the person you are inside. It is loving yourself no matter how successful you are, what kind of car you drive, what you ate for breakfast, how much you worked out, or what other people say about you.
It has nothing to do with anything external such as the things you have. It is all based internally.
True self-love doesn’t change based on someone else’s opinion of you. You are the one in control of how you feel about yourself no matter what anyone else thinks.
Do You Love Yourself?
This is an interesting question because you may not even be aware of what it means to love yourself.
You may completely love yourself or you may think you love yourself, but you likely have conditions on that love. Your love may not be unconditional.
I only know this because I used to not understand what it meant. I’d go to different people to help me with things in my life, and they kept saying, “you have to love yourself.” But I didn’t understand what that meant. I thought I loved myself because I accepted myself. But I didn’t actually love myself unconditionally.
I didn’t know that certain behaviors were actually very unloving. I used to say such mean things to myself and judge myself quite harshly. I overate which is not a loving behavior. I suffered to please other people and get their approval. I looked for validation from the outside world so that I could love myself more. It never worked.
Loving yourself means that you accept every part of yourself. You don’t judge your flaws and may even see them as unique and special. You honor your body, soul, and spirit and trust yourself no matter what anyone else says.
Self-Love Habits You Can Start Today
Doing self-love habits shows you that you love and respect yourself. Just as you’d treat someone else with love and respect, doing things for yourself shows how you feel about you.
You’d never deliberately do something to hurt someone you love, so why would you do it to yourself?
These self-love habits are ways that you show yourself how much you love and appreciate YOU.
I recommend slowly starting and incorporating these habits into your life one by one.
The more you do a habit, the easier it is to stick with it. Eventually, it will feel like a normal part of your life and something that you do naturally, without thinking about it.
1. Honor Your Body
Honoring your body is an important self-love habit that you can start doing today. You may not even realize that it is connected to self-love, but it very much is.
What you put in your body and what you do or don’t do for it, shows how much you respect it. When you truly love yourself, you want to treat your body the best you can.
Doing things that disrespect your body such as putting in toxins send the message that your body isn’t important enough to be looked after. It is not a priority.
Once you begin to shift how you treat your body, it affects everything within you including your confidence, self-worth, the actions that you do or do not take, how you feel, and how you treat others.
I know this because I used to binge eat every single day until I finally stopped for good. After I stopped, I felt like a new person. Not just because I lost weight but because I felt like for the first time, I was respecting my body and giving it love.
You have to live in your body for your whole life so it’s important to honor it in the best way you can. If it feels good, then you feel good, and your life unfolds in a more loving way.
2. Follow Your Own Intuition
Trusting and following your intuition is a super important self-love habit. When you follow your own intuition, you are saying that you trust your higher self’s guidance and essentially that you trust yourself.
Whereas, when you don’t follow your intuition especially when you can hear it clearly, you are saying that you trust someone else over yourself.
No one has your intuition because no one is you. So, while it’s great to get advice from others, ultimately the final decision is your choice.
When you trust what you are feeling and act upon it, you send a signal into the universe that you trust yourself. Therefore, you will get more advice from your higher self and things will unfold in a way that pleases you.
If you are doing what someone else wants and it goes against your own intuition, it will be uncomfortable. It will feel like something is wrong and you will know deep down that you should be tuning into your own internal guidance. Once you do, you strengthen your self-love.
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3. Say ‘No’ When You Want to and ‘Yes’ When You Want To
Self-love is about honoring your boundaries and what you want. If you are constantly saying yes to someone, are completely drained, and really don’t want to, then you aren’t honoring what you want. This may lead to burnout, physical pain, and even resentment.
The more you don’t honor your own needs, the more resentment you push down inside of you. One day it will come out and it won’t feel very good when it does.
However, if you can make it a habit to do things that respect your wants and needs and that honor you, then you won’t feel those uncomfortable, negative emotions.
You may temporarily feel a bit uncomfortable when you tell someone ‘no’ but trust me, it’s a lot less uncomfortable than not honoring yourself in the long run.
4. Do More of What Lights You Up Inside
Self-love is about following your higher self’s guidance. How do you know what this is?
It is what lights you up inside and feels joyful. Your higher self wants you to feel joy and of course, you want to feel joy as well! You and your higher self are one in the same.
Everyone is seeking joy in life; when you do more of what makes you feel alive, you feel better about yourself.
It is a way of showing that what you want matters. You are important and you take time to pursue the things that light you up inside.
5. Do Less of What Drains You
When you love yourself, you don’t force yourself to do things that drain you. Of course, there are things that you need to do. But if there is something that you can do less of or cut out completely because it doesn’t feel good or right anymore, then do that.
A self-love habit is to keep your vibration high and yourself feeling good. When you do things that don’t feel good then you are saying that you aren’t important enough to actually do what you want or that your needs don’t matter.
So, look at what can be cut out within reason and start doing less of what drains you and more of what lights you up.
6. Go After Your Dreams and Desires
Another self-love habit is to go after your goals and dreams without holding yourself back. When you aren’t showing yourself love, then you don’t put your needs first and you don’t feel like you deserve to have your dreams. Therefore, you may hold yourself back from pursuing what lights you up inside.
A beautiful self-love habit is to go after what you want, no matter what anyone else says. Don’t hold yourself back in fear that you will make a mistake, or something will go wrong.
People don’t often regret the things they do, they regret the things they DON’T do. If you want to do something and you don’t, then your self-love will waiver because you aren’t being true to yourself. It will eat away at you, and you will wonder why you didn’t love yourself enough to go after your desires.
7. Honor Your Soul
Self-love is about doing things that honor and light up your soul. Do you remember when you were a kid, so full of life and you just wanted to do things that felt good?
Children are really good at connecting with their souls. They don’t have other stuff weighing them down.
Try to bring more of that into your life now. Ask yourself, “what feels good to your soul?”
Start doing more things that make you feel alive and honor what your soul is calling you to do. It is always calling you forward to that which is for your highest good.
8. Say Daily Affirmations
Repeating daily loving affirmations to yourself every day is a great habit to build up your self-worth. When you repeat something over and over again, eventually you believe it. So, you might as well be saying positive things to yourself every day.
Also, when you are repeating loving affirmations, then there is less time to focus on what you don’t like or what’s bothering you. You fill your head with empowering words that ultimately help to create a new reality for you.
9. Focus on Your Strengths
It can be easy to focus on what you aren’t good at, but what are you good at?
When you focus on your strengths, it increases your self-confidence and gives you the motivation to go after your goals.
Next time you catch yourself focusing on your weakness, turn it around and focus on what you are good at.
You will feel better, bring those qualities closer to you and increase your self-confidence.
10. Forgive Yourself
One of the most important self-love habits you can do is to forgive yourself. You may be holding onto pain and regret from the past that you have never forgiven yourself for. If you hold onto this regret, it will eat away at your soul.
So, sit down with yourself and ask yourself, “is there anything that I feel I need to forgive myself for?” then go through the process of forgiveness. Notice how much lighter and freer you feel after doing this.
11. Let Go of the Past
Holding onto the past can weigh on your soul. If you are holding onto regret, guilt, shame, or anything from the past that isn’t serving you, now is the time to let it go.
Self-love is about doing what is best for you and holding onto something heavy isn’t serving you anymore. It’s time to let it go.
12. Be Compassionate with Yourself
One of the most important self-love habits to do is to be kind and compassionate with yourself.
I find that often most people tend to be hardest on themselves. Treat yourself like your best friend. Listen to what you need without judgment and be compassionate with yourself.
You are doing the best you can in every moment, so acknowledge that and be gentler with yourself.
If you are hard on yourself, that lowers your self-esteem, and it isn’t serving you. It may cause you to close down, put up walls and not go after what you want.
Do your best to be your own best friend and treat yourself as you treat others.
13. Respect Your Environment
An important self-love habit that can often be overlooked is keeping your environment clean.
When you live in a mess or clutter, you are saying that it doesn’t matter if things around you are messy. And guess what? Via the law of attraction, you’ll get more mess and clutter to deal with. It just may not show up in the same form.
It may show up through your relationships with people, your work, or any other way.
When you keep a neat environment and declutter, you are saying (without words) that your space matters and it’s important to you. You are saying that you respect where you are and that you are worthy of living somewhere that is comfortable.
Keeping a clean, organized space also helps to eliminate the clutter from your mind. It is true that if you are looking at clutter all day long, your mind will usually feel cluttered. It’s overloaded with stuff and doesn’t have as much space for new fresh ideas to come in.
There are many benefits to decluttering besides just self-love, which you can check out in this article here, “Emotional and Spiritual Benefits of Decluttering.”
14. Feel Your Emotions Without Judgement
Your emotions are your guidance system, and they aren’t wrong or bad. It can be very difficult to control them and that is not what they are here for.
You aren’t supposed to always feel amazing. Your emotions are simply letting you know how you feel about something.
Take their advice, allow them to be there, and then figure out what action you can do in the future.
If you allow them to show you something and be here with you, they’ll move through you much quicker than resisting them.
15. Ask for Help
Asking for help may seem like a weakness but it’s actually a huge strength. You know when it’s time to ask for help as you know your own limits and capabilities.
It shows that you love yourself because you value your time (by getting someone else to help you instead of spending hours or days trying to do it all by yourself.)
16. Be Honest with Others (And Yourself)
Self-love means being honest about what you want. You deserve to be happy and being honest with others helps them to know what makes you happy.
It’s also important to be honest with yourself. If something in your life doesn’t feel right anymore, take a look at it and be willing to let go of the things that no longer fulfill you.
Connect with your heart and soul and allow them to speak to you. Be as honest as you can with yourself because that is ultimately where you will be the happiest. Self-love is about honoring your needs.
17. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Comparison is the thief of joy and comparing yourself to others will only make you feel bad. You cannot possibly know everything what someone goes through so it’s hard to authentically compare.
Also, comparison is all about perspective. If you compare yourself to someone who you perceive to be doing better than you, you will feel bad. If you compare yourself to someone who you perceive to be doing worse than you, you will likely feel better.
Everyone is on their own unique journey and no two people are exactly alike. This is what it’s supposed to be like. You aren’t supposed to have the exact same life as someone else. You are you for a reason, and once you embrace this uniqueness, the right people and experiences will begin to show up for you in your life.
18. Have Supportive People Around You
Another powerful self-love habit is to be around people who support you. Choose your company wisely. If someone isn’t supportive of you then spend less time with them. You don’t want their beliefs to rub off onto you.
Self-love means being around people who feel good to be around and who support you and your goals.
19. Let Go of Perfectionism
Perfectionism is in the eye of the beholder. When you wait until everything is perfect, it can hold you back. Of course, make sure things are good but perfectionism can hold you back from moving forward as fast as you like.
Often, when you don’t feel good enough inside you try to make sure that what you do is perfect because you are trying to compensate for how you feel inside.
Once you truly begin to own your worth and see value within yourself, then you know that what you do is good enough and that it doesn’t have to be perfect.
20. Trust Yourself
One of the most powerful self-love habits you can develop is to trust yourself. Trusting yourself is very empowering and it shows you that you love and value your own opinion.
This can take some work if you aren’t used to trusting yourself. However, the more you step into your power, the more you will begin to slowly trust yourself and your decisions. You know yourself the best and you are the best person to make decisions for yourself.
21. Journal to Process Your Feelings
Journaling is a very healthy and powerful self-love habit to start. Journaling helps you to release what is in your head and process your feelings. When you put things down on paper, it delivers a unique perspective.
Journal prompts are also great for gaining new levels of self-awareness. Check out these articles for the best self-love journal prompts to get you started:
• The Most Powerful Journaling Prompts for Self-Worth
• The Best Journaling Prompts for Self-Love
(Pssst…this is totally something I teach more in-depth in my online course My Discovery Journal. If you are ready to get to know yourself, breakthrough your limiting beliefs and create a life that you love, I highly suggest you check it out here 🙂
Final Thoughts – Self-Love Habits
Your relationship with yourself is one of the most important ones which is why it is vital to work on developing more self-love in your life.
Self-love habits are a great way to start building that loving relationship with yourself. When you love yourself, everything in your life feels better and flows smoother.
Pick a couple of these self-love habits and start doing them today. Notice how you feel and what you experience when you incorporate more self-love into your life.
~Meghan
Pssst…this is something I teach more in-depth in my online course Your Self-Love Transformation. If you are ready to transform yourself, skyrocket your confidence and shift your world from the inside out, I highly suggest you check it out here.
