Mindfulness Daily Check-in April 11,2018
How Can I Show Love To Myself?
Hello everyone
I hope you all are doing ok today I have observed a lot around 7cups as well as in my daily life on "how can I show myself love" Yes this simple question yet so hard for many to do. It can be due to many things. Trauma, not shown love, even mistrusting. Thing is no matter what we gone through- hell and back we can start learning to love ourselves. We deserve that and need that to live. Do you want to learn of some ways to start showing love to yourself? Come on and sit with me while I share a few things with you
Find the love you seek, by first finding the love within yourself. Learn to rest in that place within you that is your true home. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Then why do you have a problem with loving yourself? Isnt the self-love something we are born with? Unfortunately, not.
Many factors can jeopardize your self love and self respect.. These factors vary from your parent's influence in your childhood, your social environment and culture to your distorted self-image. Whatever the reason might be, living without loving yourself is exhausting, stressful and may induce many negative emotions. It means constant self-doubt, fear of not being (good, smart, pretty) enough, missing chances because of the low self-esteem, burdening other people with repeated request for approval and so on.
On the other hand, loving yourself means being able to feel self-compassion and empathy for your own feelings, to greet and compliment yourself as any other person you love, to accept yourself as an imperfect human being and forgive yourself for your mistakes.
How Can Mindfulness Help?
Regarding being in the present and entering mindfulness, loving yourself means finding a way to be kind, non-judgmental and aware of whatever happens to you or whatever you are experiencing. It is an unconditional positive attitude towards our inner experiences. In order to love ourselves, we should start by simply being gentle to ourselves, as we are to other people. It means acting kind and friendly towards our emotions. Learning to observe our emotions and be with them instead of getting overwhelmed by them, is a big step forward.This includes unpleasant emotions as well as pleasant ones. Pushing away negative experiences and clinging to positive ones is a bad strategy. We often create more suffering by doing so, because we turn to drinking alcohol or some other unhealthy coping mechanism. Accepting and mindfully experiencing our feelings such as sadness, fear or anxiety is not the sign of weakness but the sign of strength.
So community let's start here, support one another on some things we can do to love ourselves. What are some things or some things you already have done today for yourself?
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@RumpleSteeleSkin
@sensitiveShade5337
@RumpleSteeleSkin
whats that? I can't see it
@sensitiveShade5337 it shows a pulsing heart shape and the word "compassion"
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
thanks for letting me know cause app doesn't read it
@sensitiveShade5337 - just that one picture or lots of pictures not working in the app?
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
that pic and one more in a different post that rumple sent
@sensitiveShade5337
I've noticed that too, some of the pics are just 200wp.wp or something like that -- but I'm desktop surfing with boocoos of security settings and such.
@diplomaticconfucious
eggsactly the same for me!
Hey @RumpleSteeleSkin
Thank you for this beautiful check-in. One of the most important things that we forget to do is to love ourselves. We need to take care of ourselves and be as kind and compassionate to ourselves as we are to others. Self care is an extremely important concept, and mindfulness can really help us be more loving to our mind and body.
Some of the things that I have been doing lately include listening to peaceful music, taking a long bath, I did some drawing :) as well as some mindful eating :D
Today I am going to remember to take care of myself and do some more mindfulness.
@peppermintlove mindful eating is such a great way to take care of yourself! I like to try and eat like that at least once a day. No TV. No phone. Just sitting and enjoying all the textures and flavors of my food. It is such a delight.
@peppermintlove
Hia Peppermint good to see youYes I do agree self care is one thing we forget to do when things start going bad. Sometimes it's easier said then done you know.....But we need to be our own best friend is what I am always told. oh wow all those things, long bath, soft music and drawing are all some good mindfulness self careing I think. Especially that long bath. I am happy to hear you are active in mindfulness and making sure you come first
@peppermintlove I agree self love and self acceptance is so crucial to feeling good about ourselves.
@RumpleSteeleSkin this came on such a perfect day! Yesterday, it became apparent that I've been really hard on myself and thinking about myself as stupid and lazy. It was a difficult realization, but I needed to have it in order to change my thoughts for the better. I'm going to show myself love by thinking kinder words to myself and treating myself like I would a friend. I think what you said about accepting negative emotions is really powerful, too. When I get in the negative thought loop I often try to shut it down and say things like "stop it, shut up," but that only makes the mean voices in my head louder. It seems counterintuitive to accept what we want to change, but it's absolutely true! Thank you so much for this post. I really needed it today
@wingedtrish
Hello Trish good to see you todayIt is normal at times for us to be very hard on ourselves. hugzFor whatever reasons our brains wiring just gets messed up and we are like an enemy to ourselves. Yay on showing yourself some love today!!!! Accepting of negative emotions can be very unpleasant. But when we really take them in and believe them then we are injuring ourselves. You can do this Trish. As you are an unique person here in mindfulness community. Hugz
@RumpleSteeleSkin
When we look at ourselves, we see worts and all -- even if some of th worts aren't really there. How simple it is to rattle off our worse characteristics but to rattle off what we like is much harder. We learn to compare ourselves to others at a young age - and that doesn't do us any favors in the long run. We often surrender our individuality to blend in or be "acceptable" and that cloisters our true being under the surface.
We have to remember - out of everyone in the world, it is truly ourselves that we should love unconditionally. We know ourselves most. We know we deserve the best. We know that we have great potential. We should give ourselves the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong (over and over) that it is not us - just our decisions or those made for us.
We are told (most of us at least) it's better to put other people first - but you know what, I don't think that's the case all the time. I think when we are at a good place in our lives (like self-loving and mindful) that you can put others first but only if it is not detrimental to ourselves. So many of us have put the welfare of others ahead of our own - jeopardizing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health as well as financially suffering and numerous other measurable sacrifices - without evaluating how harmful it is to our own being and succumbing to the external pressures (family duty, community duty, peer pressure, et al) and not realizing how much damage we
did to ourselves and how long it would to take to pickup the pieces and get back to the point when it all started. (Or that could just be me.)
We just have to get past the muck of pain, hurt, injury, slight, negative speak, imposed labels, brain clutter and so forth and give ourselves and honest chance - again and again if it is needed. I'm not saying this is easy, because it isn't - but we all deserve the ability to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and look in the mirror and say "Well, that didn't go as planned but I still love you for trying and we're going to keep trying, and keep striving, because we are survivors and we will carry on even if we are battered and bruised. We will make it."
We are our own worst enemy and our own best love.
Hope that made sense - Tumbleweed Mode engaged :D
@diplomaticconfucious
WOW Diplomatic this was a wonderful read here. And yes so great to see you today!! We are our own enemy I totally agree on this. Thing is to turn that around to be a friend to ourselves and know we need love
I find self care is very important. Healthy eating and exercise does help. Without feeling good about yourself it makes it more difficult to deal with external problems when they arise. I try to look past when someone is unkind or negative towards me. It not always easy, but if I am not getting down on myself about it, I think it helps.
@sail46
Hiaaaa SailYes self care is very important in life and for self. I find eating something like fruit has me feeling good verse something like starch as its comfort food.Yes looking past some of that negativity is a good thing. Also being aware of who you are and how you feel about self is very important. Good job
@RumpleSteeleSkin thanks for this post!
Today I did my strength and stretching class and answered pms and alerts so I am feeling involved in 7cups. Hope others are finding their own sense of inner strength and stability.
@soulsings
Souls very good to see you todaywow stretching is great!! Today I did a few life things but well stretching wasn't one of those lol Good job Souls
@RumpleSteeleSkin glad you do the stretching.
@RumpleSteeleSkin
Usually I take long relaxing showers with lots of skincare and afterwards looking for a quiet nook to read in, to do some self-love. When I'm very upset I also like going through my bullet-journal, in which I have beautiful memories with lots of love from my family and friends stored, or I go through my gift baskets: the baskets in which I keep gifts I got which are too important to me to lose.
Today, I did none of that, but I think I found a new way of self-love anyway. I was practising some morning-yoga-exercises, but for the very first time, I noticed that my stomach just wasn't okay with all the moves. I never had that before. But instead of going on, hoping it would pass, I stopped. Because it is okay if your body sometimes is like: nah, not today. I stopped, told myself yoga is supposed to feel good, that this wasn't a bad thing, I was just taking care of myself and my body and that I hopefully will feel better soon.
I've never listened to my body like that, and I liked it a lot. I'm proud of myself that I did this
Passed out 2 times today. They just gave me a GI cocktail in the ER.
@DanaMH
That sounds so rough Dana, hope the cocktail helped -
@amiablePeace77
Nope - feel like I am giving birth to twins since 1 child wasn't this painful.
@RumpleSteeleSkin
This morning i was out so i could not do my usual training but i managed to meditate (guided) outside when waiting.
Also i started a kind of journal writing down things 3 goods things (blessings) which happened to me a day and why i think they happened. I started it only 2 days ago but when writing it down the second time i already realized that they happened because i initiated them.
@amiablePeace77
Love this idea... thanks for sharing!
@RumpleSteeleSkin - I saved this one because I wanted to have time to really think on it.
I think loving ourselves is a lot harder than maybe it should be. Somehow when we are little and even as we grow up we seem to easily absorb and internalize negative thoughts about ourselves, and it is that much harder to love others and be patient and kind with them when we hold ourselves in contempt.
I want to try to work on this a little bit every day.
