How to stay self-loving & caring when the world seems to be against us

In this post I will share my absolute top tips of how to practice self-love and care during our most difficult times.

What I mean with difficult times is when one or more of our main life pillars which I believe to be home, love, health and purpose get rocked.

PILLAR & WHAT IT RELATES TO

HOME

Safety, support (family & friends) and love

LOVE

Romantic love and our ability to attract and find long fulfilling lasting love

HEALTH

Our mental and physical health and wellbeing

PURPOSE

Relates to work and/or life purpose, contribution and deeper meaning

When life is good all the 4 pillars are supported and functioning and self-love and self-care will most likely come easier to us. We might even feel that we don’t even need to practice it as all our external reference points such as our family, friends, partner, work are confirming that we are absolutely worthy, loveable and capable. In essence all our needs and wants are met to a certain degree and we feel undeniably fantastic.

But what happens if what we thought to be the love of our life un-expectantly turns around and breaks up with us? What happens if the job that gave us purpose and reason to get up in the morning for whatever reason get terminated? What happens to our sense of worth, purpose and self-love if we no longer have support from our family and friends, if we lose our home or safety network?

Is there a way that we can remain feeling enough, capable and loveable despite that the world seemingly is turning its back on us? Is there a way we can be our own biggest supporter through our difficult times and learn and grow even stronger from our bad experiences?

My response today is absolutely YES! I have learnt that self-love and building our inner strength is key to remaining feeling strong, confident and undeniably worthy and capable no matter what life throws our way.

However, if you asked me the same question a few years back I most likely would have said no without even hesitating.

Back then when a relationship of 4 years broke down in pieces as I was nearing the magic age of “you absolutely need to have it all figured out by now” AKA 30 I found myself feeling both lost and like a failure.

Instead of practice self-love and self-care to heal my broken heart and to get my feet back on the ground again my inner critic took over and I became my own worst enemy. I started to question my own lovability, solely blaming myself for the things that had gone wrong in the relationship and replaying hurtful events and words over and over in my mind.

Again, I found myself in a similar situation at another point in my life after terminating a job that wasn’t the right fit. While ending my employment was my own decision I started to question my own capability and allowed myself to start wondering if I ever would be able to find another job again. Needless to say, not being my own best friend in these situations only made the situation worse.

While this all may sound like crazy thinking we all have setbacks in our lives that makes us question our own worth, lovability and capability and I leant that it is in those times where we absolutely need to use all tools in our tool box to practice both self-love and self-care.

Below you will find my go to self- love tools whenever the rug gets pulled under my feet. Hope you find them as useful as I have.

1. Focus on the basics

When we find ourselves knocked to the ground and before we start to attempt to fix things or to see the bright side of our situation I found it to be best to just focus on the basics such as sleep and eating.

It may sound simple but when we are low, stressed and anxious eating and sleeping tend to be the things we want and can do the least but need the most. I’m a “doer” at heart and if you are the same I hear you. For us “doers” relaxing and focusing on the basics instead of trying to fix the situation can be extremely hard to do.

However, I have learnt that in order to properly deal with difficult situations, we need strength which comes from energy so by loving ourselves by focusing on rest, recovery and eating nutritious food we will naturally fuel ourselves up with the energy needed to cope and overcome our current situation.

2. Allow yourself to mourn the loss and feel your feelings

While escaping our feelings and the pain that comes with set backs seems like the most attractive thing to do it will only delay and amplify our pain and suffering. The unfortunate truth is that we can’t escape our emotions and sadness, instead I come to learn that loving ourselves in these situation means that we are able to allow ourselves to feel our feelings and mourn the loss without judgement or blame. Only when we are present to ourselves and our feeling are we able to move on and rebuild ourselves.

I believe we all have a built in self-healing function but for it to kick in we need to be brave enough to sit our pain and sadness, despite the fact that staying present with our pain is one of the most challenging things we have to do.

So, instead of drowning your sorrows in the bottom of a bottle or distract yourself with mindless external tasks cry if you need to, scream if have to and kick the hell out of a boxing bag if you can. I have learnt that feeling our feelings and finding healthy outlets for our sadness and anger will help to kickstarting our natural self-healing mechanics and set us off to a road of healthy recovery.

3. Practice self-compassion & forgiveness

While we are being present to our feelings I also learn that the way we can practice self-love at the same time is practice self-compassion and forgiveness as oppose to resort to self-criticism and blame. In the end of the day if we lived a life worth living we will with absolute certainty make mistakes, fail terribly, make a fool or ourselves and completely fuck up not just once but many many times. Instead of keep count of the number of times and feel defeat our true job and life lesson is to show compassion to ourselves and to accept that it’s all part of being human. So, instead shaming and blaming ourselves for screwing up I believe we need to learn to forgive ourselves and be 100% ok with not being perfect at the time and realise that the fact of the matter is that no one really is. We weren’t meant to be. Instead we are meant to learn and grow from our mistakes and challenges. I believe they have purposefully been sent to us as opportunities to build upon or inner strength, however it is completely up to us what we chose to do with it and interpret it.

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#Mindset #Selflove