How to Be Your Own Best Friend – #selflove

Would you be friends with someone who treats you like how you treat yourself?

That’s a question I had reflected on a bit this year. This year so far has had its ups and downs, and upon reflecting, I realized that I had not really treated myself the way I expected any of my friends to treat me.

Even though I was going through challenging times, I still should’ve treated myself with more kindness and grace. I wasn’t the type of friend that I needed for myself.

So, as things have been looking brighter, I’ve made the effort to rebuild the relationship I have with myself and become my own best friend.

This blog post is about how you can become your own best friend! You will learn 6 tips that can help you become your own best friend and improve the relationship you have with yourself. It’s for absolutely anyone who wants to have a better relationship with themselves, in good times and bad.

Now, let’s get into this.

1 – Self-Care

Self-care is the name in itself, it’s where you take care of YOURself! It is where you take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health and prioritize yourself.

To practice self-care, you can start by setting aside time dedicated to taking care of yourself. Make sure that you set aside time to do your self-care and treat it like an important appointment or meeting. Think of activities that help you rest and recharge. It can be as simple as watching your favorite TV show or taking a relaxing bath.

Self-care helps you become your own best friend since it allows you to treat yourself like you would your friend. You would take care of your friend with more compassion and develop more understanding of why they need rest and recharge every once in a while.

So, don’t forget to take time for yourself!

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RELATED: How to Practice Self-Care Without Spending a Dime

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2 – Solo Dates

Solo dates are where you take yourself out on a date! You do an activity by yourself and spend time in your own company. This is a great way to discover more about who you are and build a better relationship with yourself.

To plan a solo date, schedule a time when you’ll take yourself out. Think of activities that you personally love doing and would be okay with doing by yourself. Examples can include going for a walk in nature, touring your own city, reading a book in the library, or you can do plenty of at-home solo dates as well!

When you think about it, you build relationships with other people by spending more time with them and getting to know them. It’s the same thing when building a relationship with yourself, especially being your own best friend. Solo dates are a great way to spend time with yourself and it also boosts your self-confidence along the way! The more solo dates you do, the more comfortable you get with them.

The more comfortable you get with solo dates, the more time you get used to spending time alone.

3 – Treating yourself

Treating yourself is where you give yourself a little reward or gift. There are many different ways you can treat yourself. Most times, people treat themselves after accomplishing something, after a long day of hard work, and many more.

That’s why, there are so many things you can do to treat yourself. You can treat yourself to the following:

• When you’ve accomplished something.
• When you need a pick-me-up.
• When you need a little stress reliever.
• When you need a self-love booster

Of course, it’s all up to you when you decide to treat yourself. A good starting point is how you would treat a friend or loved one of yours whenever they’ve accomplished something or had a bad day. It all goes back to treating yourself like you would a best friend.

Examples of treating yourself can be having your favorite dessert, buying yourself a small gift, or taking a break to enjoy an activity you love. Whenever you treat yourself, you become your own best friend by reminding yourself that you value yourself.

By always showing yourself kindness and treating yourself, you build a better relationship with yourself and become your own best friend.

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RELATED: How to Practice the Five Love Languages on Yourself

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4 – Doing acts of service for yourself

This is where you do different tasks to meet your own needs, saving yourself time and energy later on.

Examples of acts of service you can do for yourself include preparing meals, cleaning, or decluttering spaces that you’ve been putting off, doing life admin tasks that have been bugging you, or upgrading different areas of your life. These are basically tasks that your future self will thank you for.

You can start doing acts of service for yourself by listing down tasks that you’ve been needing to get done, or tasks you’ve been procrastinating. These also include tasks that you know will lift a huge weight off your shoulders.

Imagine how it feels when someone does an act of service for you, it probably feels great, and you feel grateful for them. Doing acts of service for yourself helps you become your own best friend because you show yourself that you are always willing to do things for yourself to make life easy later on. These are just little things you can do to add more self-love into your life.

5 – Positive & Encouraging Affirmations

Affirmations are a way to improve the way you talk to yourself AKA self-talk. Of course, you want to say more positive affirmations that boost your self-confidence rather than negative affirmations that hurt it.

Saying more positive affirmations to yourself may be easier said than done. But a good starting point is answering this question:

Will you still be friends with someone who talked to you the way you talked to yourself?

If the answer is no, then it means that it’s time to change the way that you talk to yourself. You want to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a loved one or a friend.

So, start by identifying the negative self-talk you constantly say to yourself, and change it to more encouraging and positive ones. For example, if you struggle with your self-image with your looks, then you may say positive affirmations that include “I am beautiful” “I am pretty”.

Saying positive and encouraging affirmations helps you become your own best friend by shifting your self-talk from being overly critical to being more encouraging. At the end of the day, you can always check your progress by answering the question if you will still be friends with someone who talks to you the way you talk to yourself.

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RELATED: How to Lie To Yourself (Not What You Think)

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6 – Create a list of qualities in a best friend, and act them yourself

Creating a list of qualities you admire in a best friend and then implementing them yourself is a way to boost your self-compassion.

All you need to do is simply list the qualities you value in a best friend, and then treat yourself with those same qualities. Examples of qualities can include:

• Supportive
• Always listens
• Encouraging

Once you have your list, make sure that you have all those qualities to yourself. For example, if you value a friend who supports you in whatever you do, make sure that you’re always supporting yourself. Same thing with valuing a friend who always listens to you. Make sure that whenever you feel down or upset about something, take the time to deal with your feelings rather than suppressing them.

Creating this list is a unique tip for growth since it’s a great way to improve the relationship you have with yourself and become your own best friend. It boosts self-love and you prove to yourself that you can always count on yourself.

Take a SMALL STEP:

These are small steps you can take to help you with each of these tips to becoming your own best friend:

1. Self-Care – List down at least 3-5 self-care activities that personally give you the best rest & recharge.
2. Solo Dates – List down at least 3 activities that you can do solo for your solo date.
3. Giving gifts to yourself/treating yourself – Write down at least 3-5 occasions where you’ll treat yourself. Bonus is create a gift list of things (like a wish list) that you want to get, and when it’s time to treat yourself you can buy it.
4. Doing acts of service to yourself – List down at least 3 tasks that you’ve been putting off and been wanting to do.
5. Positive and encouraging affirmations – Write down at least 5 positive affirmations you’ll say about yourself
6. Write down your qualities in a best friend, and act like them to yourself – Make a list of the qualities that you value in a best friend.

To Wrap Up:

Hopefully, all these tips can help you improve the relationship you have with yourself so you can become your own best friend. By practicing self-care, taking yourself out on solo dates, treating yourself, doing tasks for yourself, having more positive self-talk, and just treating yourself like your own best friend in general, you strengthen the relationship you have with yourself.

It just takes one small step at a time! I actually wrote a book called Small Steps to Progression which you can download for free here! It’s all about taking small steps to making progress, and when it comes to becoming your own best friend, small steps are important. When you download it, you’ll also have access to my Free Resources Library too.

In the meantime, don’t forget to be kind to yourself always and remember to treat yourself like the best friend you need.

-Lauren 😊

P.S I recommend you read these blog posts next:

• Tips to building a better relationship with yourself  
• 20 ways to date yourself and build a better relationship with you
• Becoming the Main Character of Your Life Guide

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