It is incredibly easy to forget to treat yourself with love and respect and it is just as easy to be your own worst critic. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. You can’t “break up” or “divorce” yourself; you need to be able to tolerate yourself for your entire life. You need to treat yourself like you
If you do not treat yourself well or believe you are a worthy, deserving person then you may fall guilty to the self-verification theory. Self-verification theory is when people seek confirmation of their self-concept. This means if you have a negative self-concept, you are likely to attract and surround yourself with those who confirm your belief about yourself. Often those who stay in abusive relationships do so because they believe they aren’t worthy or deserving of love, and their abusive partner verifies that belief. As you can see, it is completely toxic and that is why it is important to recognize your beauty and worth, and truly love yourself. If you find yourself attracting toxic relationships, maybe that’s a sign that you need start treating yourself better.
1. Catch Yourself:
The more and more you try and catch yourself talking negatively to yourself, the more aware you will become of it. For example, the other day you got an exam back and weren’t happy with the grade. From the minute you saw the grade, the negative self talk started. “Why didn’t you try harder, why aren’t you as smart as everyone else, how could you get that question wrong?” and it started to give you anxiety. But then, you catch yourself. You realize that you did try hard enough and you did prepare well for it. Just because you got a not-so-great grade on one exam doesn’t mean you're not smart or capable. It just happened to be quite a difficult exam! It definitely wasn’t worth beating yourself up over it.
2. Forgive Yourself:
Everyone makes mistakes; we are all human. Recognize what you did wrong, and learn from that mistake. Don’t let it become a source of internal hatred. Let go of all regrets and leave the past in the past.
3. Accept Yourself:
Accept yourself exactly as you are. Recognize your own beauty for what it is, not in the context of comparing it to others. So many of us are chasing after unattainable beauty standards thanks to our constant exposure to media, models and photoshopped photography. Realize that most of the time what you are seeing in magazines is unattainable and a lot of the times, not even real.
“To rely so heavily on appearance is to set you up for a fall, after all, image is transient and it’s also subjective. It creates an insecure existence where you not only live a life based on fluctuating value of what you can attain through validation but you’re also debasing your own substance by neglecting what makes you, you – your values. Instead your identity is your appearance” – Natalie Lue from Baggage Reclaim.
4. Meditate:
Practicing being mindful will allow you to wake up and see things how they really are. It will allow you to live in the present moment and appreciate it. It will help you let go of judgments and accept yourself for who you really are.
Author: Alivia Hall
Author: Alivia Hall