How to Start Your Self Love Journey

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If you haven’t already, now is the time to start your self love journey. It is time to recognize your worth and celebrate how amazing you are. It is time to start loving yourself and everything about you. 

Don’t worry though, you are not alone on this journey. I have walked through my own self love journey and I’m ready to take your hand and cheer you on as your walk through yours.

What is self love? It is knowing your authentic self, knowing your value, and knowing your worth. It is realizing that your personal needs, wants and desires are important.

It is believing that your life matters and that you are here for a purpose. It is seeing yourself through God’s lens and not the world’s.

Self love is becoming your truest self and your happiest and healthiest self. When we love ourselves we don’t need affirmation or validation from other people to know how incredible we are. We can recognize our own greatness and become intentional about affirming ourselves.

Why I Started My Journey

I started my self love journey because I was tired of hating myself. One day I was sitting at a relationship workshop and each person was asked to share one quality they were looking for in someone of the opposite sex.

As each person went around the room sharing what they desired, one guy (that I had a slight crush on at the time) mentioned confidence. I sat there wishing I could be a confident woman but didn’t believe I could ever get to that place.

That night was not the start of my journey; it didn’t happen for a couple more years because I honestly didn’t believe there was hope for me.

During those years before I became intentional about my journey, I dabbled in making changes but didn’t put forth the effort to make any change.

One night as I was praying and asking God where my husband was (through a lot of tears and frustration), I heard God ask me, “Are you the woman the type of man you are praying for would be seeking?”

Let me tell you that this response CRUSHED me. Then I decided to listen to what God was telling me. 

I was not operating at the fullness of who God created me to be. I had allowed life and people to dictate what I thought of myself and I thought very poorly of who I was.

It was in that time of being with God I decided I no longer wanted to live as a hurt, broken, and victimized woman. I asked God to help me heal and help me see myself right.

Let me be clear, I did not make this decision to start my self love journey because I was trying to get a husband. I did this because I wanted a better life for myself, but getting married to my amazing husband was a by-product of the decisions I made.

Although I strongly desired marriage, I realized that the love I should have for myself far outweighed any other relationship except the one with God.

Also, note that this self love journey never ends, but is something we have to be intentional about throughout our life. It is ongoing but gets easier with time.

Steps For Your Self Love Journey

Make a Decision

You have to decide that you want to make a change and that you are worthy of change. Nobody else can make this decision for you.

The choice is yours and yours alone. Make sure your decision is motivated by your inner desire to change for yourself and not extrinsically motivated. 

You have to decide that you are worth the effort, that you are enough. Please stop falling into the trap of the hundreds of teachings that teach you about going through this process just for the sake of getting a husband.

Even if you strongly desire marriage, this journey is for you and the love you have for yourself. Marriage can be a by-product, but should not be the motivation behind your decision-making.

Make a Commitment

Commit to yourself that you are going to push past any obstacle that comes your way during your self love journey. You are worth it to keep going forward.

Tell the people who are in your inner circle what you are doing so they can be a source of prayer and encouragement when things get hard (and they will). Decide that you are worth it enough to commit to this journey.

There are also so many great books to read that can help you through this journey. I reviewed 10 books that I read during my journey that I found extremely helpful.

Make a List of the Things You Like About Yourself

This was the hardest thing for me to do in the beginning because I really couldn’t think of anything. Anything I thought of I would dismiss or find something negative with it.

I want to encourage you to write down as many things you can without overthinking them and don’t allow yourself extra dialogue. Find the positive in yourself.

I promise this gets easier as you continue along on your journey. Keep adding to this list as you continue on your journey.

Check out these notebooks and pens that I absolutely love using when I journal!

Start a Gratitude Journal

This ties into the previous list that you wrote about yourself. Make this an ongoing aspect of your self love journey.

Every day take 5 minutes to write one thing about yourself that you are grateful for (“I am grateful…”) and then say it out loud. This may be very uncomfortable at first, especially if you are used to spewing negative words all over yourself. 

Make sure you are writing (and speaking) something every single day. If you can’t think of something new, just keep writing the same thing each day until you can add something new to your list. As time goes on you will be able to start adding more to the list of things you are grateful about yourself.

Get to Know Yourself

Often we don’t know who we are because we have been so inundated with what the people around us say about us. The problem is that they were not the ones who created us, so they don’t truly know who we are.

To get to know who you are, you have to go to your actual Creator, God. Ask Him who you are and He will reveal things about you that you may not know or you have pushed away. You are made in His Image and Likeness (Genesis 1:26) so spend time in the Word to see what else God says about you.

I also recommend taking time to learn your spiritual gifts, strengths, personality traits, love language, and more and see how they all fit together to make you the incredible woman that you are.

Take time to ask yourself questions to get to know yourself. What are you naturally good at? How does your mind operate? What do you enjoy doing? 

Take time each day to reflect on who you truly are. Create an ongoing list of each new thing you discover about yourself. Celebrate who you are and remember that you are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

Be Kind to Yourself

As you go through your self love journey, please be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself for anything that may have happened in your past that you are not pleased with.

Be kind when healing isn’t happening as quickly as you would like it to happen. Forgive yourself for any negative words you have spoken to yourself. Stop looking at qualities of yourself as mistakes or imperfections. 

Change Your Dialogue

If you are like how I used to be, you probably spoke a lot of negative things about yourself and thought a lot of negative things about yourself. It is time to start being intentional about what you say out loud and in your mind.

Start replacing anything negative thinking with something positive. The Word of God tells us we are to remind our minds daily (Romans 12:2) and that is what we need to do.

Changing your dialogue will not happen overnight, but needs to happen daily. The more you do it the easier it will become. 

One strategy that worked for me was speaking positive things out loud to myself in front of a mirror. I struggled with my physical appearance, so this helped me to start speaking and finally believing positive things about how I looked.

Stop Comparing Yourself

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” There is so much truth to this statement. God created each one of us individually and set us apart from every other person He created.

When we try to compare ourselves to others, we are telling God that He didn’t do a good job creating us. You may need to start limiting your social media use, recognize when you are feeling jealous, and most importantly take time to pray.

We gain freedom in our minds when we stop comparing ourselves to others and start embracing all the wonderful things that make us who we are.

Accept the Journey Isn’t Easy

As I stated earlier, this journey is not easy and it does not happen overnight. You will encounter peaks during your journey, but you will also encounter valleys. When you get to a valley, remember there is always light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to keep walking forward.

Remember that God will be with you during this journey if you invite Him in. He is the one that will heal you and restore you if you allow Him. The journey is hard, but it will be worth it. As you move forward, God will continue refining you and you will come out like pure gold.

If you need professional support for working through this process, you might consider online therapy.