11 Feb Love Yourself More!
Do you love yourself? Do you REALLY love yourself? What does it mean to practice self-love and how can we practice more of it? They say you cannot love a person truly without loving yourself first and after thirty years of marriage I can truly say this is the wisest thing anyone has said EVER. In order to live well you have to practice self-love, it truly influences everything in your life. What you decide to eat, who you spend your precious time with, who you pick as a mate, how much time you devote to working out and how you deal with life in general. It all derives from how much you love yourself.
So, lets talk about that and how we can start practicing. Actions that support our growth support this practice. There are four very important areas to support when we are talking about self-love and I cover this in my empowerment workshops. They are spirituality, relationships, wellness and creativity. It’s important to carve out time for all of these every day even if it’s just five minutes to cultivate the essence of self-appreciation and love.
Oh, by the way, I love giving homework – so here is yours (and feel free to take a pic and tag me when you have completed it! I will give you a huge hug which will feed in the relationship side of your quadrant!). Draw four squares. Label each one with the four areas of self-love practice (spirituality, relationships, wellness and creativity). In each of these squares, write things that you will do to support each area while cultivating a sense of love and appreciation. Let me give you some examples: in the spirituality side, I set time apart every morning to meditate, write on my gratitude journal and pray. To fill my relationship quadrant, I send a loving message to whomever comes to mind that morning via text, FB or Instagram and I tell them how grateful I am for them. Every Sunday I plan my workouts for the week which takes care of my wellness quadrant. Finally, I tap into my creativity by simply making time for FUN so I either work on my vision board (which is always evolving), I dance in my living room or simply have tons of fun planning my next choreo for spin class!
Self-love creates a discovery of thyself and it requires deep inner work on a daily basis. Like I say in class, fill your cup so you can give fully because you cannot give from an empty one. I pray that in this season of love you cultivate more things that you absolutely LOVE and stop doing the things that you don’t!
Written by our very own: Maria Brito