The Guide to Learning to Love Yourself

Hello lovelies!

Sorry for my absence this past week – I thankfully managed to get Sunday’s post up on time (as it was already scheduled beforehand) but I’m aware I’ve not been commenting and liking everyone’s posts as much. This is, put simply, because I’ve had a crap week. My mental health has hit an all time low this past week, which I’m not going to go into details about, and now I have physical health problems! As any of you readers who know me personally may know, I’ve suffered from sinusitis for around 3 years now, and hayfever just makes it ever worse… 😦 However, I can definitely write this post from my bed, granted with a sniffly nose, just fine. I’m only writing this post Tuesday night and scheduling it for tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6 pm (so the usual day and time), so please bear with me!

I’ve been wanting to write a blog post surrounding how to learn to love yourself for a while now, but I wanted to be in the right frame of mind so I wasn’t being a hypocrite and telling you all to do something I cannot. However, today I had an ‘epiphany’ … I’ve come to realise that just because my mental illness has affected my week negatively, doesn’t mean I don’t still have endless amounts of love rooted so deep inside me it can never escape, no matter what. I will always love myself, I just don’t love my mental illnesses. And that’s okay, as long as I learn to accept that they are a part of me and probably always will be.

I guess the title is a little misleading, as there is no ‘guide’ to loving yourself. It’s a long, tiring process that everyone has to go through at some point in order to feel truly happy. Despite this, I’m sure you’ll all be happy to know I do have some advice on learning to love yourself – Hooray! This post isn’t completely pointless…

A realisation that helped massively in my journey to self-love is knowing there is no-one else identical to me on this planet. I am so incredibly unique and special – you literally can’t find me anywhere else. All the things I dislike about myself someone else loves. I realised this when my boyfriend said he loves my smile (something I’ve always been insecure about) and it just hit me that our least favourite things about ourselves are someone else’s favourite. We are so important in this universe. We mean so little, yet so much. Your actions affect the people around you in ways you couldn’t even imagine – someone has a favourite book because of you, a favourite song, a quote that reminds them of you.

I also had to learn to start accepting all my flaws. Every single human being has imperfections and insecurities that they’d love to change. I realised accepting and maybe even loving my insecurities makes me powerful. For example, I used to hate my freckles. Now I love them because they make me unique. Now I love my freckles there is nothing anyone could say that could lead me to becoming insecure about them again, and THAT is what makes me powerful. Confidence is power.

It may be cliche, but at the end of the day you are going to have to live with your body forever… Why not love it? Why spend time hating and damaging your body when all it does is try it’s hardest to function correctly for you? How will you ever prosper and flourish into the beautiful human being you’re meant to be if you are constantly picking at your tiny imperfections and putting yourself down?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this post will help anyone love themselves as you’ve probably all read this on an Instagram quote a million times before, but learning to love my body for all that it does to keep me alive really is how I became the best version of myself.

I hope you take something from this post, even if it’s just being a little less hard on yourself.

Lots of love,

Soph. xx