Fall In Love

Thursday, February 15, 2018

With Yourself

Hello my lovelies! I'm sorry it has been so so long. I hope you understand but the leaving cert and life in general has made writing so difficult. I am so so excited for summer to be able to create and share so many new ideas with you all. The season of love is here and whether you celebrated it by yourself or with your bae, I hope you had a truly lovely Valentine's Day! The past few days got me thinking about love and how we struggle to give it to ourselves. The journey to loving oneself is different for everyone, some have arrived at the self obsessed stage while others, including myself, are still crawling towards self toleration, heheh we'll get there! Here are some ways which I have found help me treat myself with a little more kindness and care. I hope they help you too, you deserve it.




'You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.' 

Think Love
'What we think, we become'. Our thoughts can have such a profound impact on how we view ourselves and how we feel internally. It is hard to believe that we have complete and absolute control over every single one of the 60,000 thoughts that enter our heads each day. You can choose to think harmful, degrading, critical thoughts or you can choose to think uplifting, inspiring, compassionate thoughts. Our thoughts create our reality therefor wouldn't we all continuously choose to think love rather than hate? Having absolute power over what plays through your mind is really really hard, even mindfulness masters like Eckart Tolle and the Dalai Lama still confront their mind's monsters. There are various ways in which we can help our minds to think more lovelier thoughts. Mindfulness plays such a vital role in helping us to silently observe our thoughts rather than directly engage with them. A method which is a little less mentally demanding is positive affirmations. I must admit I did feel slightly crazy when I started to do this but deciding to include self-love affirmations into my morning routine has had such a positive impact on my journey towards self acceptance. I listen to this and this while doing my yoga or while getting ready for the day ahead and while it is a little different it honestly makes such a lovely difference! Regular practice of positive affirmations has been proven to subconsciously program our minds in the directions of which we choose...so if you want to become a millionaire watch this hehe. Other ways you can help train your brain to cherish instead of chide yourself is through reading uplifting loving quotes, listening to positive self love inducing music and through proclaiming something you love about yourself each and every day!

Practice Love
Let your actions speak your words. Try treating yourself like you would a little child. The voices of 'you don't deserve this' may get louder as you do this but a wise woman once told me to just do, despite all of the niggling feelings of 'not enough', 'not worthy', just do...and let the mind catch up later! Maybe it won't ever catch up but at least you may get a relaxing bath or bunch of flowers out of it hehe! Aside from the basics of treating your body with nourishing food and water, energising it with movement and relaxing it with rest and sleep, you also deserve to treat yourself. Devote time to you, celebrate your existence and how far you have come. You've survived every single day up until this very moment and that is something to be happy about. I wrote more about this in my previous post. Perhaps you could carry out an audit of what lowers your ability to love yourself. Personally, I could spend hours scrolling through Instagram and Facebook, comparing and despairing, it turns the love self love down so low that all that is left is the booming thoughts of self hate. Clear out your social media closet; unfollow, unsubscribe and delete anything and anyone who makes you feel even the slightest bit bad about yourself. Of course this isn't easy, being unfollowed by a friend on social media these days is the equivalent of being punched in the tummy. However, I know I would cry at the thought of anyone negatively comparing themselves to me, therefor you have to weigh up the consequences of hurting someones feelings for a few moments or continuously infinitely hurting your own. Ask your true self, 'what do I want right now and what do I need right now?'. What you may want to do is sit around and watch Netflix which will give you short term satisfaction but a long term sense of self disgust, however, what you may need to do is go for a shower, read a book and catch up with a friend. Practice makes perfect, the more you do the love the more you'll feel the love.


Feel Love 
I really believe that we can only know true love if we have the beauty of being able to experience it. Connect with those who you love and of whom love you. I realised my ability to tolerate myself increases dramatically when I am sharing moments and creating memories with those I love the most. Spend time with the people who make you feel safe, secure, worthy, loved and perfectly imperfect as you perfectly are. The more you see the good in others, the more you will establish the good in yourself. In the process of showing your affection for others and through watching them marvel over you, you may just learn how to send a little bit of it towards yourself. For the days when physically connecting isn't feasible; send a text, make a call or if you're old fashioned print off some pictures with your favourite people and most memorable times together (I do this in my diary and it never fails to make the love bugs come crawling)! 

one of the best nights of my life with my favourite people, thinking of it never fails to make me feel so full of love

See Love 
'If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person'. Something that my beautiful sister always tells me is to 'focus on the facts'. It can be easy to become swept away by the torment of the paranoid fear monsters in our minds...they focus on our negatives, highlight  our flaws and magnify our weaknesses. But what if we could transform that fear into love by amplifying our strengths, emphasising our good qualities and enhancing our stunning unique traits? Become your own biggest fan, the Kanye to your very own Kanye! See all of your beauty and remind yourself that you are a good person. Every time you recognise something seemingly bad within yourself counteract it with three good true things. Next time a really horrible self critical thought comes into your head, instead of immediately assuming it as truth, try and question the thought. Ask it on what facts it is basing its information on, try and wonder if it is stemming from fear and irrationality or reality and truth. Every time you look in the mirror and are drawn to your thighs or your hips or your wrists, (who knows..we all have the most ridiculous of insecurities heheh), try drawing your eyes to your pretty little freckles, your strong capable hands, your glistening magical eyes. You are beautiful and worthy inside and out, it's time you get to see it.

Be Love 
'The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be. I have to be love.'

love you
How do you cultivate self love? Feel free to let me know in the comments below or anonymously in the ASK section of my blog (it makes my day getting such kind lovely messages from you, it means the world that these posts are helping people). I hope this post helps you fall in love with the most important person in this world, YOU!  Click here to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on new blog posts. I hope you enjoyed!
lots of love & peace & happiness
Lauren x

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