5 Ways to Like Yourself A Little More
Do you like yourself?
Are you happy with who you are?
Do you feel confident, secure and happy with yourself?
Take a moment to answer these questions honestly.
Some people seem to ooze confidence right from birth, but for the rest of us, it can be a challenge. Add in societal pressures to look, eat, and live a certain way, and it’s easy to see why so many individuals struggle with confidence and liking themselves.
If you struggle with emotional eating, there’s likely years of insecurities concerning your body, appearance and self. And it’s easy to see how these emotional eating and body image are closely linked. But what people often get wrong is thinking that you need to change the way you look before you can feel good about yourself. The truth is, learning to like yourself isn’t just about liking your appearance. It’s about building your self-esteem (regardless of what you look like) through self-acceptance. If you want to heal your relationship with food, I suggest learning to like yourself now!
When you learn to love yourself, your food challenges will quickly fade away for good. Now I’m not saying that loving yourself is easy – it’s definitely hard! But fortunately, liking yourself is a skill that you can develop and learn.
Liking yourself is really about building your self-esteem, which comes from accepting yourself as you are – not who you might be. This doesn’t mean you never criticize yourself again or refuse to change, but that you learn to accept your flaws and take the good with the bad, so to speak.
Here are 5 ways to do just that.
1. Embrace Your Strengths
We tend to focus more on our flaws and weaknesses, but we should really relish in our strengths and accomplishments too! Make a list of all your strengths and put it somewhere you’ll see often. Include physical attributes you like about yourself, personality traits and quirks you have, accomplishments and skills. If you’re struggling to come up with a list, ask your loved ones to help you out.
2. Surround Yourself with Empowering People
Do you notice your energy shift when you’re with certain people? Especially when it comes to emotional eating, dieting and body image, the people we spend time with can either be our greatest weakness or our greatest asset. Start to notice if the people you spend time with talk about themselves in a more positive or negative way. Do you talk about their insecurities or do they speak encouraging words? Surround yourself with empowering individuals who speak about themselves in a respectful and loving way. When you spend time with others who like themselves, it can empower you to start talking to and treating yourself better too.
3. Spend Time Alone
You may not have a full grasp of who you truly are and if you don’t know who you are, how can you like yourself? Spending time alone can give you a better understanding of your feelings, your abilities, your passions and interests. You will learn about who you are and this builds self-confidence.
4. Accept that No One is Perfect
I know when I compare myself to others, I’m usually focusing on their positive attributes where I feel I don’t measure up. (That’s why it’s a good idea to try to avoid compare yourself to others). But even if you do end up comparing yourself to others from time to time, it can be helpful to remind yourself that no one is perfect. Not you, not that celebrity on the magazine cover, no one. And that’s okay. Our flaws make us human, who we are.
5. Treat yourself like someone you love
How do you treat the people you love? With harsh words? Criticisms? Not paying attention to them? No! In order to start liking yourself better, start treating yourself better! How do you show people you love them? With affection? Quality time? Words of affirmation? We all have a love language we use to communicate our love to others. But direct that love language to yourself too! Whether it’s carving out daily time for self care, reading positive affirmations out loud or simply spending more time with yourself, when you treat yourself like someone you love, you’re bound to start liking that person more – I’m talking about you!