5 Actions You Can Do To Love Yourself a (little) More

Does it feel like more effort sometimes?

Here’s a little truth. At the time I’m writing this (January 2025), I am currently struggling with my self-love. I feel like it has became an accumulation of the self doubt I had experienced last year and some… disappointing experiences (I won’t go into too much detail with that lol).

But, what I love talking about in this blog is the power of taking small steps. In this blog post, I will list 5 actions you can do to love yourself even if it’s just a little bit. These have helped me in the past and bounce back, and are actions I’ve been implementing just to boost my self-love a little more.

Let’s dive in.

1 – Shameless Emotions

What I mean by this is letting yourself feel every single emotion with no guilt.

As I mentioned earlier, I struggled a lot with self-doubt last year, including with my studies/career, relationships, and even my personal life in general. I’ve cried, I’ve felt stressed, I had moments of anxiety and moments where I just wanted to be alone, and I’ve cried again.

Something I used to do before was force myself to get out of this emotion and try to be positive. I tried distracting myself with funny TV shows and doing pretty much anything to get rid of this negative emotion. However, this did more harm than good because every time I did that, it told my brain that I was a “bad person” for feeling how I felt.

And that has such a negative impact on your self-love! Think about this: if your friend was feeling stressed, sad, or upset about something, you wouldn’t get mad at them for feeling the way they feel; that’s not how you show care for them. Instead, you are just there for them if they need to rant, vent, or just talk. It’s the exact same thing when it comes to you—that exact same care.

So if you’re feeling anxious, sad, feel like crying, or punching the air because you’re stressed, it is important to not suppress those emotions. While it is important to manage them so they don’t takeover your life, the only way to do that is to first feel those emotions without forcing yourself to get rid of it.

Hence, for you to properly manage your manage, you need to allow yourself to feel those emotions without any sort of negative guilt or shame.

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RELATED: The Ultimate Self-Love Beginner Guide (That You Need!)

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2 – Skincare affirmations

This is where you do your skincare (where you are most likely looking at the mirror) and say affirmations to yourself. This is the perfect time to say affirmations to yourself, whether in your head or out loud.

I’ve said pretty mean things to myself in 2024, especially during moments when a relationship failed or the time I got laid off. Anyone who has ever heard of self-talk would know that the more mean things you say to yourself, the more you start to believe it, and it affects your actions too.

I’ve been writing my affirmations in a journal on and off for the past few years now. However, saying affirmations while doing my skincare has been a gamechanger for me.

So, whenever you are doing skincare, you can say the affirmations in your head or out loud, and look at yourself in the eye in the mirror.

This is also a bonus your love language is words of affirmation!

3 – Have something to look forward to every day & every week

In terms of looking forward to something every day, it can be something as simple as watching your favorite TV show.

With looking forward to something every week, one of the things I look forward to are my solo dates, and weekend activities, depending on what I’ve got planned.

For instance, my last 2 years of law school, it was hectic with studies on top of all the other commitments I have. The way I survived all of that is simply knowing that I had something to look forward to at the end of every day and week.

So, think of something that you will look forward to doing every day and every week. It’s always great knowing you have something to look forward to while you are working/studying.

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RELATED: Self-Love Habits for Ultimate Self-Discovery

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4 – Solo dates

Solo dates are a great way to practice being in your own company and get used to it.

Solo dates have become relatively easy for me to do. That’s why, solo dates are my go-to’s for whenever I feel like I need a self-love boost.

When you learn how to be good in your own company, you increase your self-love a little more.

The only way to get more comfortable with doing more solo dates is to… keep going on them. My blog post here has over 100+ solo date ideas you can choose from. A good starting point is going to places and doing activities that you feel the most at ease with. You can always build up from there.

5 – Listening to yourself

This can look like:

• Listening to your body – For example, your body is telling you it needs rest, you take a break (guilt-free) and not force yourself to do more work. Another example is if your body is telling you that it needs sleep because it’s tired, you’re going to sleep, obviously.
• Listening to your inner dialogue/intuition – We have all heard of what our intuition is. This is something we use for both small decisions (like whether to go to an event or not) and big decisions (like what career to take, and what are our next big steps).

Listening to yourself is pretty much just trusting yourself. The more you decide things for yourself, the more your self-love increases.

Think about this, if you are constantly double-checking, asking for other people’s opinions, or any sort of validation of your decision, it decreases your self-love because it tells you that you don’t trust yourself enough to make these decisions on your own… especially if they are small decisions like what outfit you are going to wear.

Take a SMALL STEP

Here are some small steps you can take to start implementing these tips today:

1. Shameless emotions: From now on, let yourself feel every emotion without the shame :))
2. Skincare affirmations: When you do your skincare tonight or the next morning, say some affirmations to yourself in the mirror.
3. Having something to look forward to every day & every week: The tip, is in itself. Plan what you will do tomorrow and sometime later in the week that will make you feel excited.
4. Solo dates: I highly suggest reading my blog post on how to plan a solo date as a starting point!
5. Listen to yourself: Start with building self-trust from smaller decisions such as the outfit you are wearing and the tasks that you will do today.

To Wrap Up

If you feel like you need a little booster, hopefully, you will get some benefit out of feeling your emotions without shame, saying affirmations to yourself while you’re doing your skincare, making exciting plans (including solo dates), and ultimately, building self-trust.

It is important to take small steps in moments when you are feeling overwhelmed. Speaking of small steps, I’ve got a book called Small Steps to Progression which is all about this concept. You can download it in the Free Resources Library along with MANY other free resources.

In the meantime, remember to tell yourself that you love yourself 🙂

-Lauren x

P.S I suggest reading these blog posts next:

• How to Make Self-Love a Part of Your Life
• 10 Easy Ways to Implement Self-love
• Daily Self-Love Habits to Implement

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