Practical Exercises for Self Love To Start Now

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What is self love and what exercises for self love do we need to put into practice? 

Self love is when you know your authentic self, you know your value, and you know your worth. You realize that your personal needs, wants and desires are important. It is realizing that your life matters and that you are here for a purpose. 

Self love is becoming your truest self, and most likely your happiest and healthiest self. When you love yourself you don’t need affirmation or validation from other people to know how incredible you are. You start to recognize your greatness and become intentional about affirming yourself.

Why Should I Exercise Self Love?

It Is Commanded To Us

The word of God says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31 NKJV). The Message translation says that we should, “Love others as well as you love yourself.”

When we read this scripture we tend to focus only on the first part about loving our neighbor, but skip past the part that says love them as you love yourself. If you don’t truly love yourself, you won’t be able to love your neighbors to the magnitude that God desires. 

It Changes Your Perspective of Yourself

When you start to implement exercises for self-love you will start seeing yourself through God’s lens and not who the world says you are. This will help you to start to understand your truest, most authentic self, and to see that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

There is freedom in knowing who you are at the core of yourself. When you practice self-love you are reminding yourself who you are, regardless of what anyone else is saying.

It Helps You Embrace Your Greatness

Practicing exercises for self love helps you to see how fearfully and wonderfully made you are (Psalm 139:14). It helps you to see all of the great things about yourself. It helps you to see your strengths, gifts, and even the way you think in a new light. You can take all that you know about yourself and start to embrace yourself instead of criticizing yourself. 

It Is Healthy

Another great reason to exercise self love is that it is a great way to improve your health. Once you begin loving yourself you start seeing your worth and value.

You start to change your negative thoughts to positive thoughts. People who embrace life with a positive attitude tend to live longer and healthier lives. Self love also gives you the strength to start setting boundaries with toxic relationships.

It Promotes Healthier Relationships

Often when you are unhappy with yourself, it can be hard to be genuinely happy for others. Have you heard the statement before that “Hurt People hurt people”?

If your inner dialogue is negative, you tend to project that onto others and point out all of the negative things you see in them. A healthy person operates in the fullness of who God created them to be and treats others with that same consideration.

What Are Some Exercises FOr Self Love?

Now that you have learned why it is important to practice self love, it is time to put in the work and do some exercises. 

The first thing that you need to do is make a list of all of your qualities about yourself. Think of your strength, your gifts, your personality traits, your way of thinking, and anything else you want to add to the list. 

Now that you have made a list of all of your wonderful qualities, let’s try some different exercises.

“I Love” Statements

For this exercise, you need to get a notebook and your favorite writing utensil. On each line of the paper, I want you to right one of the following three statements: “I love my ___”, “I love that I ___”, and “I love how ___”. 

Once you have those written out I want you to complete each sentence with a quality about yourself from your previous list. After you have completed all of the statements you are going to read each one out loud. Read through them slowly and let the words flow over you.

Embrace the statement as it is being spoken and let your mind absorb it. Go ahead and repeat each line at least 3 times. If you want to take this to the next level, do this exercise standing in front of the mirror. 

“I Am” Poster

This is a fun exercise for those who enjoy being creative. You will need a poster board or foam board that is preferably bigger than 8 x 11. You will also need some sort of artistic utensils; crayons, markers, paint, or even words or letters from magazines. 

The first thing you need to do is put the words “I AM” either in the center of the poster or on the top of the poster. Once you have that done then take that list of qualities that you have written about yourself and use those words to fill the poster.

You can put them on there in any way that suits who you are. You can put them in categories (personality, strengths, gifts, etc.) or just individual spots that look good to you. 

Have fun with this poster and make it look like the unique person that you are. Once you have finished the poster display it in a place where you will be able to look at it every single day. 

Words of Affirmation

For this exercise refer back to your list of qualities about yourself and turn them into “I AM” statements. Write out each statement individually on either a sheet of paper or note cards. Use whatever is going to work best for you. 

Read through your affirmations one at a time and embrace the words that you are speaking out loud. Keep your affirmation cards in a place where you will be able to read through them daily.

You can read through all of them every day, read 1 individual card each day, or even just read one individual card for a whole week. Choose the option that will be most effective for you 

Create a Habit

Make it a habit to practice one form of exercise for self love every single day. The more you practice these exercises, the more natural it becomes, and the more you will start to believe them.

Once you can start believing them you will start accepting them as the truth about yourself. Embracing the truth about yourself is self love. 

ANY QUESTIONS?