How to Love Yourself

1. Overcome negative beliefs about yourself. Many people have trouble letting go of negative thoughts that they have about themselves. These negative thoughts often come from outside people whose opinion we value and from whom we seek love and acceptance.
2. Avoid perfectionism. Some people have trouble accepting anything less than perfection from themselves. If you find yourself pursuing perfectionism and feeling negatively about yourself when you are less than perfect, take three simple steps. Stop your current line of thinking, then focus on the effort that will be required to work towards a goal, then steadily apply the required effort.

• Changing your focus from a final product (which may be evaluated in terms of "perfection) to the effort behind a task (which is harder to quantify as "perfect") can help you appreciate your own good work.

    3. Discard your negative filter. Focusing only on the negatives in your life is a bad habit. Excessive focus on negative or less favorable events in your life can make these events seem disproportionately important. If you find yourself complaining that everything that happens to you is bad, try to find a little evidence to the contrary; it is very unlikely that everything is really bad.

    4. Never call yourself names. Calling yourself a name is reducing yourself from a human to a single element of yourself that you do not like.

• Saying “I am such a failure” after getting fired from a job is inaccurate and unfair to you. Instead, make the useful comment, “I lost my job, but I can use this experience to find and keep a new job.”
• Saying “I am so stupid” is also likely untrue and reductive. If you feel stupid, it’s more likely that you have a lack of knowledge about something. Instead, think, “I don’t know how to do this basic home maintenance. Perhaps I could take a class and learn to do this in the future.”

   5. Do not assume the worst can happen. It can be easy to fall into the assumption that the very worst outcome will happen with every situation. However, changing your inner thoughts to be realistic or truthful can help you avoid the generalization or exaggeration that accompanies assuming the worst.

  6. Rewrite your internal script. When you realize that you are thinking negatively for yourself, acknowledge the feeling, identify the source of the feeling, and then consciously make a new statement re-writing your thought as a more positive one.

• For example, if you forgot to send an important work-related email, you may find yourself thinking “I am so stupid! How could I have done that?”
• Stop yourself, and think “I feel stupid right now because I forgot to send the email. When I would forget to do things as a child, my father would tell me that I was stupid. These are his words, not my own, in my head.” Then think to yourself, “I am a competent employee who made a human mistake, and I will be sure to write myself a reminder in the future. For now, I will send the email along with an apology for not sending it before.”