Trifecta of Self Love
Lesson Eight: Trifecta of Self Love
Self love forms the foundation of your single, most important relationship - with yourself. The strength of all your other relationships and the way you see the world is equal to the strength of the foundation with yourself.
Loving yourself is a win-win for all. It provides you with an inner happiness, confidence and peace of mind that is not easily swayed by outside events and opinions. It enables you to make healthier choices and the best decisions across all areas of your life from your relationships to your finances. It allows you to truly rejoice in other people's good fortune rather than wondering "why not me" or even resenting it. It enables you to be more genuinely loving towards others and to be of greater service to the world. Ultimately, the more you love yourself, the more everything and everyone you encounter benefits.
Self love is NOT about being arrogant or egotistical. It is not about comparing yourself to others to determine if you are good enough. It is not about always putting yourself first at the expense of others. It is not about always getting your way.
The thing with self love is, that it is a choice. So simple, but after years of struggling with body image, self depreciation and feeling like you are not worthy, like many women experience, it can be feel very hard. Now, I want to let you know that you have permission to love yourself!
My Story
I began my journey into health and fitness wanting to change myself. I felt like all the parts of my body i didn’t like needed to be better, I underate, over trained and punished myself for anything I felt was a “failure”. I would beat myself down and would often compare myself to others. I wasn’t choosing to love myself.
It wasn’t until I began working on my mindset that I found everything I worked on pointed back to radical self acceptance and love. I considered myself humble and had a big ego around NOT being self-centred! But of course this backfired, I often felt overlooked, insecure and unheard. Plus I didn’t take any steps in my life towards what I truly wanted to do. It began with my intention to be who I really wanted to be, and the actions I took.
The way I exercised and ate came from a place of care and compassion rather than punishment.
I took time for myself and had space for me, rather than running around always doing something for someone else, or things to not be alone.
I worked on my abilities and built my strengths, I became more confident and put myself out of my comfort bubble. I kept myself accountable on things I set out to do.
I became aware of my emotions, long suppressed. I listened to what I felt and expressed how I was feeling. I listened what I said to myself and if it was negative I changed the tone. I didn’t spend hours thinking about my “flaws” and what people thought, I got on with my day and thought about what I CAN do to move forwards.
And after a while, bit by bit, I could honestly say, I love myself.
While everyone has their up and down days, love for yourself will keep you moving forwards.
In the Powherful Program, the primary goal of the Mind Pillar is to develop the environment to foster self love. I believe this comes through the aspects of:
Self Care - The physical aspect. The ways you physically look after your body and mind.
Self Confidence - The mental aspect. Developing the clarity and trust in your abilities to feel confident in yourself.
Self Worth - The emotional side. Learning your emotional and spiritual side, and expressing it healthily.
Self Care (CARE)
How you physically treat yourself is an important aspect of developing self love. If you treat your body and mind poorly, you will not be physiologically and psychologically nourished.
Training - Your body is designed to move. Strengthen your body with a a balance of strength training, cardio training and flexibility with plenty of gentle movement each day. We have a whole Pillar, Move that expands training.
Nutrition - Eating well is important because what you ingest holds the building blocks to building, repairing and energising your body. Our Munch Pillar expands on this.
Rest and Recovery - Give your body time to recuperate from the hustle and bustle from life. If you are always go go go, you will most definitely burn out and have no energy left to give. Create space in your life to rest.
Sleep - Good quality sleep and a sleep routine will help you have energy, balanced hormones and let your body heal.
Meditation and Mindfulness - Practising meditation and mindfulness are a powerful way to connect with a deep peace inside you. It is a way to ground and reconnect and get your body into a rest and digest mode, rather than fight or flight.
Breathing - Your breath is your life force. Taking deep belly breaths is a beautiful physical way you can care for yourself in a second.
Stretching - Stretching your body, breathing and doing yoga are beautiful ways to unwind, and let go of physical and emotional tension.
Alone time - Taking time to yourself is healing. Space is important for self care, reflection and insight. When the bustle of stimulus is all around you it can be hard to connect to who you truly are.
Treat yourself - Do activities and hobbies you enjoy, do them regularly. Doing the things you love keeps your passion for life alive.
Take a break - A holiday, or a getaway from your current routine can be very healthy. This freshens up your perspective, changes the scenery and shakes up your routine.
Self Confidence (CLARITY)
Self-confidence is the feeling or belief that you can have faith in or rely yourself. Having confidence can help you to take on the world with more energy and determination, resulting in better relationships, quality work and a feeling of being connected with your surroundings. I believe confidence comes from clarity. When you are clear on yourself, your direction and your ability to get things done, you are very confident in yourself!
Self awareness - Being aware of yourself, what you like and dislike, what you want to do, being concious of yourself and your values, beliefs, personal preferences and tendencies
Vision - Having a purpose and a reason why makes you confident and clear on what you want to do. It holds you steady when you encounter obstacles.
Education - Keeping a curious mind, always open to new experiences and knowledge is how you keep creating and discovering. The more you know the more you can use new skills and information to grow.
Goal Setting - Being able to set goals, make a plan and put in place the steps necessary to get there is so important for confidence!
Accountability and Action - Being able to take the steps necessary, and follow up to remain accountable.
Habits and Habit Tracking - Build habits that build you. Habits are actions that become a repeated loop inside your brain. They are tough to break but once they are made with high quality habits, they serve you well to create your identity.
Reflection - Looking back on what you’ve been doing can help you make better decisions. If you have been going well and making progress, that’s great! It indicates you are on the right path, for now! If you need to make some adjustments, and to make sure you’re not going around in circles you will only know from reflection!
Self Worth (COMPASSION)
Self worth is your perceived sense of value or worthiness. It is deeply emotional and spiritual. When you value yourself and have good self-esteem, you feel secure and worthwhile. Having strong self worth means you are more likely to treat yourself and others with compassion and kindness, not listen to the external opinions of others and keep and open heart. It reduces self sabotaging behaviours and the deeper subconscious reactions from feeling insecure which can clash with your identity.
Emotions and Emotional intelligence - Understanding emotions and becoming more emotionally intelligent is important. Emotions are powerful signals of your subconscious state and feelings. Learning what they are saying and expressing them healthily means they are an important signal from your intuition
Belief and Self belief - Beliefs are deep seated ideas we believe to be true. Often they are subconscious, so understanding them and bringing them up can help heal and develop healthier, more empowering beliefs. Limiting beliefs are the ones that keep you in self sabotage, often when we do not truly trust and love ourselves many beliefs keep us “safe” from danger or the unknown, which is actually where our growth lies!
Honesty - Being honest and open with yourself and others is a big part of being authentically you. Being the person that you are, and not hiding behind lies to yourself or others build self worth massively!
Self Talk - The way you speak to yourself is very powerful. Speak to yourself with compassion, honesty and positivity. You want a cheerleader inside your head, not a critic!
Choose Your Circle - The people that surround you affect your self worth massively. Being surrounded by bullies is detrimental and very hard to grow and flourish. Choose to be around people who have self worth, and are about growth and experience. Listen to podcasts and audiobooks and read text from people with beautiful open minds. You are the average of the 5 people closest to you
Self Acceptance - Acceptance of yourself, and all of yourself is necessary. This means acknowledging your dark and light, not ignoring the shadows.
Forgiveness - Judgement is the root of self sabotage. While being honest and objective about your actions is helpful for progress, shaming and blaming is hurtful and reinforces withdrawal and retreat. Forgive yourself for the past and for what you didn’t know better for at the time. Eliminate “should” from your vocabulary and reinforce what you COULD do instead. Then get out there and give it your best.
Prioritise yourself - You put your oxygen mask on before others on a plane, and you should do the same in you life. If your cup is empty, you have nothing to give others or the world. Make sure you are fulfilled each day physically, mentally and emotionally so you can spread more love and joy.
Fall in love with yourself - Begin to appreciate the amazing creation that you are, acknowledge the little beautiful things that you do and are, nourish yourself, and give yourself permission to love yourself!
