3 Pillars of Self-Love

I’ve found that self-love can be broken up into three different components. I say components and not steps because there is no order to accomplish them and each of these are simply pieces that make up a bigger whole.

Some of them might come easier than others depending on the person, the important thing though, is to just to start. Reaching one is better than none and what matters most is that you’re working towards something.

I’ll take a moment to add a quick note: Self-love is a subjective thing and difficult for many people. In this post, I’m simply laying the roadmap that I’ve discovered. Ultimately, it’s up to you how you want to follow it.

I’m giving you the ideal, what makes up the 100% if you will. Maybe your personal goal is just to reach 75%, and that’s totally fine. As long as you’re working towards what you feel you need.

With that said, let me explain what I believe to be the 3 pillars of self-love. (Again, in no particular order)

 

Intrinsic Self-Love

This category is comprised of the intrinsic sense of self-worth and value you have for yourself and the deeper sense of love that resides in you. It’s about loving the person you are, or are becoming, that lies in your personality.

Ways to Work Towards This:

-Evaluating who you are as a person and deciding what about yourself you love and what you might want to change or work on (this leads into the Self-Care pillar as well)

-Understanding you have value in this word (overcoming self-hatred is suited for a qualified professional, which I am not, so I suggest talking to a therapist if you find yourself dealing with that)

-Looking deep within yourself (in whatever way that manifests for you, meditation, journaling, etc.) and forming a connection with yourself that blooms into love and care

 

Self-Care

It’s an act of love to care deeply about yourself, to want to work towards better and help yourself grow.

Self-Care is about being your own support system and taking care of yourself. While sometimes this means going easy on yourself, forgiving yourself, and pulling yourself up, other times it means forcing yourself into the uncomfortable for the sake of growth to align yourself with who you want to become.

Ways to Work Towards This:

-If you’re working towards bettering yourself in any way, you are already practicing this form of self-love. It could be as small as creating a healthy habit, or as big as working through your problems in therapy.

-If you identified areas of improvement in yourself, going through the hard work of change and growth is a way to form this kind of self-love. While the journey will be tough, relying on yourself and pulling yourself up will deepen your connection to yourself and what you’re capable of.

-Learning to lean on yourself for support and actualizing the intrinsic strength that you already have in you.

 

Liking Yourself

It sounds obvious, but what I mean by this is simply liking who you are, the things you do/have accomplished and generally enjoying your own company. It’s about being able compliment yourself the way you might do for a friend or loved one and having an overall positive mindset about yourself.

Ways to Work Towards This:

-Take pride in your small accomplishments. For example, like the way you did your hair or the food you cooked, or that you finished a task. The kind of things you might say to cheer your friend on “Your outfit looks great today” or “You did so well at that arcade game” and turn that kind of talk on yourself

-Physical appearance is a big reason why people don’t like themselves, so working towards body positivity (or the first step of body neutrality) in a healthy way (with a qualified professional) is a big achievement. Again, as long as you’re working towards something it’s an act of self-love.

-If you’ve heard of relationships where the couple loves each other but doesn’t like each other, you can understand why liking yourself is an important part of self-love. Working on enjoying your own company and cultivating positive self-talk is a way to develop this.

 

You might find you already have one or more of these things already which is great news! Hopefully this can help you determine where to focus your self-love journey next. If you’re at the beginning and not sure, choose what feels right and start there.

These components all flow together and working one means, in some capacity, working on all. There are no hard and fast rules, just a stream with ebbs and flows.

I also want to add that reaching all three doesn’t mean that you will always feel super positively about yourself. It’s just the way of life that there will be times where you don’t like the person you were in a situation, or don’t follow self-care, or look in the mirror and frown instead of smile. But as long as you keep moving on and your overarching perception doesn’t change you know you’ve achieved it.

(Also we are changing individuals, what you once loved about yourself might not rein true and that’s okay. Edit your life and love as often as you need to, it’s your masterpiece after all).

As for me, I recently heard a song called Obsessed With me which got me into the mindset of playfully liking myself and it clicked that this was the missing piece of my self-love puzzle since I’ve been cultivating the other two.

Your journey might start somewhere else, but what’s important is that it does.

I hope this helps provide some understanding of the concept of self-love or assists in giving you direction for your journey! I wish you the best!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and theories in the comments!