Hey babe!
Happy Valentine’s Day!!!
How’s it going so far for you?
Are you being a single Pringle or are you boo’ed up?
Whatever the case may be, I’m here to let you know that today should not pressure you at all. Today is all about love so be open to receiving and giving not just to others but to yourself.
It’s been awhile since I put up a blog post and best believe I’m going to blame Law School. Your girl is now a postgraduate student at the Nigerian Law School, Abuja (you’d know if you followed me on insta, so pop by real quick and do that)
ok Loves, let’s get into today’s gist.
As you know, I’m all about sharing the good stuff with you so we’re growing together. This month, I picked self love as our core focus because why not?! It’s the season of love after all. So in celebration of love, I’m talking about self love and 4 reasons why you deserve your own love too.
Also, I thought it befitting to have my first blog post of the month on a day we celebrate love.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
The concept of self love
I only recently paid attention to the concept of self love on my self growth journey. As you might know by now, I’m a Nigerian woman from a typical Nigerian home who has lived in the typical Nigerian setting all her life. Self love was not something spelt out for us. It was not a concept our parents or even teachers in school discussed with us. If anything, the form of self love they believed in teaching us, was discipline. They taught us to push ourselves hard. Most of us were even taught to hold ourselves to near impossible standards. If you’re Yoruba like me, you probably heard your parents asking you if your mates ‘carrying first in class’ had two heads. Bottom line is that most of us have spent our whole lives under the pressure to be the best we can possibly be. While some of us stuck to it, some rebelled and some are just on the God abeg movement.
Those we looked up to, taught us to strive for perfection and if you are a first born like me, you were taught to be ‘selfless’ putting your family’s needs above yours physically and mentally. Now, I necessarily do not regard this as a bad thing. I believe they did the best they knew how to and most of our parents or guardians had good intentions. They believed they were ‘training us’ and I don’t blame them because they didn’t know better or they believed that was the best way to make us proper individuals. If anything, this training ingrained in us good morals, how to fight to be the best and how to be survivors anywhere in the world.
However, the major problem with this kind of training is that we were not taught balance. We were not taught that although you should strive to do your best, you should also celebrate your small wins and prioritize progress over perfection. They forgot to teach us to take breaks for ourselves from time to time, rather they praised us for working to the point of physical and mental exhaustion because that was the hallmark of a ‘great woman’ making most of us live with high functioning anxiety.
Again, I do not blame them because their generation did not have widespread access to information and resources to help self regulate like we do.
One of the best things they taught us was that
Omo ta ba bi, o yeki o tun ara re bi
Which translates to
As a growing child, you should strive to reinvent / reform yourself.
This means that the responsibility lies on us to unlearn negative patterns we picked up as children and relearn better coping skills in order to live our best lives and enjoy this little time we have on earth in the best way possible.
This is why I’m sharing with you what I’ve learnt about self love.
Self love is a beautiful concept that teaches you to value yourself as person. It means having high regard for your own happiness and well-being. Self love means filling your own cup first before pouring out to others. Being at your optimum capacity so you can function properly.
There are three types of self-love:
Physical—refers to how you see yourself
Mental—refers to how you think of yourself (self-acceptance)
Psychological—refers to how you treat yourself (self-respect)
Self love can mean different things to each of us because we all have different ways of taking care of ourselves. You must define what brings you happiness and fulfillment.
It could be any of the following:
prioritizing your needs
Positive self talk
Self trust
Self compassion
Self forgiveness
Setting healthy boundaries
Self Care
Taking breaks without feeling guilty
Eating healthy
Spending time on what makes you happy
And many more. There are so many ways to show yourself how much you care and value yourself.
Since I started my self growth journey, I’ve tried to develop love for myself in the following ways
appreciating my body and it’s flaws because I am human and our imperfections are what makes us perfectly unique
Quitting negative self talk because I do not need to be my own harshest critic. It does not help.
Speaking to myself with compassion and treating myself with kindness so that I become my own biggest cheerleader
Spending more time and money on my body and my outfit because when I look good, I feel good and I become more confident in myself, thus loving the me I see in the mirror.
Creating healthy balance between life and work so I can spend more time doing the things I love and nurture the relationships in my life.
Prioritizing time with myself so I can reflect and get to know who I am as a person
Prioritizing sleep so I can function properly the next day
Acknowledgingthat my feelings as valid and
Learning better coping mechanisms to help regulate my anxiety, fears and concerns.
It definitely has been the best decision of my life. I look in the mirror and I smile at the woman looking back. I gaze at my pimpled chubby face and my round belly and I do not see imperfections, I see Aderonke, a woman who deserves care, attention and love. It was not always like this. I used to frown at my reflection in the mirror and it got to a point that I stopped looking at it or I’d pay it a brief glance. It was not until I listened to a podcast on how I had been neglecting myself, I realized that I needed to do better. In that podcast, I was asked to look at myself in the mirror, really look at the person, not at the blemishes on the skin but look into the eyes of the person staring and apologize for not taking better care, for not thanking your body for going through so much everyday to help you survive and accomplish your goals. Now hug yourself and tell yourself how much you love you. I did that and I cried because it was the first time I saw myself. Not as a bystander observing my life pass me by but as a friend and a person who deserves my care and attention. Something that I give out so often that there’s nothing left for me.
But now, the story is different. I say my affirmations in the morning and I feel the surge of confidence. I sleep early and wake up feeling ready to take on the day. I eat healthier (even though it’s a struggle) because I know it’ll keep me healthy, fit and help me feel better about myself. I spend time with myself in silence. No judgement. No fear. Just me being in tune with my surroundings and helping myself cope with the noise in my head. Understanding who I am, what I love to do, and what would make life meaningful to me. Talking to Allah (SWT) my creator and filling my cup so that I and those around me can enjoy the best version of me.
As you know this is a journey that takes time but I share my experiences with you so you know that you can do it too. I obviously did not start doing all these things at once. It’s been a process going on for at least 3 years now. I started doing these things intentionally and slowly. Adding one habit to my routine at a time and trying to adapt to it. All I can say is that It’s been amazing to personally experience how great it can be to fall in love with yourself everyday.
I’m still a work in progress and I believe you can be too. If you’re already on the journey, you can remind yourself why you should continue loving yourself and if you’re not on this journey yet, here’s why you should start loving yourself intentionally:
1. Increased happiness
How many of us can boast that we’re truly happy. Especially in Nigeria where there seems to be one social issue or the other plaguing us. Most of us keep procrastinating our happiness believing that it is conditional upon some external factors. How many times have you heard yourself say Omo I can’t wait to be rich, that’s when I’ll be finally happy? Or I can’t wait to settle down with boo hoping that that’s what will finally make you happy. Most of us are in a perpetual state of sadness or anxiety because we believe it’s until we reach our goals before we find true happiness. We hinge our happiness on external factors rather than internal. We’re constantly on the move and many of us even avoid being by ourselves because we do not want to be left with our thoughts. The truth is no matter how much we think external things like partying, accomplishments or even our relationships with others will give us happiness, it’s only temporary. We will still need to look inward for lasting happiness. It can be a difficult concept to accept but the truth is happiness is largely a choice. It’s a choice we have to consistently practice. It’s a process that takes inner work. So the question you need to ask yourself today is ‘what am I hinging my happiness on?’ Is your happiness found within you or you have to hinge it on something outside your control?
2. Growth mindset
I heard about this growth mindset some years back and it stuck in my head for days! It was when I started to consider my growth journey intentionally. I learnt that with a growth mindset instead of a “fixed” one, ‘you are more likely to embrace challenges, learn from feedback, and further develop your talents and potential’. Of course I told myself I had to adopt that type of mindset seeing as I’ve always being obsessed with being the best version of myself. Self love influences the way you handle life’s challenges and the way you see yourself in relation to them. When you treat yourself more kindly, you respond to stressful situations with calm and flexibility. Practicing self love even helps you develop mental resilience in the face of adversity.
3. Increased motivation
As African women we’re taught the hustle life. We’re taught to make sacrifices. We are taught “no pain, no gain”. We believe in working hard and when we don’t work as hard our society expects, we beat ourselves up fearing that we will not succeed or as we Nigerians like to say ‘dey play’. We make the mistake of believing that practicing self compassion or positive self talk will make us complacent, lazy or worse self Indulgent. We think it makes us soft, weak, and less ambitious so we try to motivate ourselves with harsh judgment and self-criticism instead. This has not helped anybody and I have it on good authority that ever since I started treating myself with compassion, I’ve been more consistent in accomplishing my goals. In the past, I used to berate myself for not knowing something. This usually led to anxiety that I might never accomplish my goals, so I would get scared and hate myself for not doing my best. I would wonder why I couldn’t be smart enough to figure it out. However in reality, I spent more time worrying and berating myself than actually picking up my phone and learning about what I didn’t know. Since I started to learn about self love, I realized that how I talk to myself is important so Now i tell myself when I feel overwhelmed because I do not know something that ‘anything I don’t know, I’ll figure it out’ this automatically puts me in a better frame of mind to handle my anxiety!
‘Interestingly, research shows that self-compassion is a greater personal motivator than self-criticism. People with higher levels of self-compassion typically have greater motivation to work toward their goals.’ They’re more interested in finding ways to improve, investing energy in that pursuit rather than the defensiveness, anxiety, and social comparison that ultimately lead to decreased motivation.
4. Better physical and mental health
Babe the truth is our mind, body and soul are connected so each one affects the other. When you feel better mentally, it shows up in your radiance of your skin. When you look good or you wear your favorite outfit, your confidence surges. Now let’s talk a bit of science, self love practice has been proven to help us develop better immune function, stabilized glucose levels in people with diabetes, and improved relaxation.
One study even showed that that self-love practices induced higher parasympathetic activity in its participants thus, promoting stress reduction and emotion regulation on a physiological level.
On the flip side too, Studies have shown that when you don’t show yourself how much you love yourself, you’re likely to develop mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
So there you have it! 4 reasons why you should show yourself more love. Now don’t forget that this should not be a one time thing. Self love can only be developed through consistent practice. Next, I’ll be sharing the best ways you can show yourself some love this so be sure to suscribe to be notified as soon as I post.
Ok I’m ready to go and do my corporate law assignment.
I’m sending you lots of love and light.
Don’t forget to follow me on all socials and I’ll chat you up soon.
Bye babe!
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