How To Boost Your Self-Love
By: Kimora Harris
Tags: Self Worth, Self Improvement, Body Image, Self Love, Confidence

How To Boost Your Self-Love

Me only being twenty, I have learned so much about self-love and confidence which has molded me and transformed me into the woman I’ve become today.

I think it’s important to know there is nothing wrong with being insecure about certain traits that you have.

However, there comes to a time and place when you need to be able to release what you can’t control.

You can never find love or happiness from someone else until you find it within yourself.

How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you. It is up to us to set the standard as to how people treat us by loving ourselves in our thoughts, actions, and feelings. The self-looking glass is a concept that I like to explain to individuals when advising on self-love because I believe it’s something we all do subconsciously.

The self-looking glass is a reflection of how we think people view us. So our perception and the way we value ourselves are based on how we think others view and value us.

When I was in grade school I was insecure and ashamed of my curly hair and, I had my mom straighten it every day because I wanted to fit in then in high school I used to get mean comments on my curly hair this one girl referred to me as “noodlehead” and I became very insecure of my hair. As an adult I’ve come to love my hair, it didn’t happen overnight but it happened.

One of the biggest insecurities I struggled with is body image and skinny shaming. Skinny shaming is a concept that I feel that is taken lightly and not as Seriously as it should be.

Growing up, it was difficult — especially as a black female — because the black female is supposed to have big boobs, big butt, and be thick. I was not that.

One thing I struggled with in my early teenage years was society’s stigmatization of what the ideal black female should look like in which I developed negative thoughts towards my body image.

But one thing I realized is this is who I am and nobody can take that away from me. It’s also important to know what one person’s perception might be completely different from what another person perceives.

One of the biggest problems of how we measure worth and value is by external traits rather than internal. I have a tattoo on my chest in Arabic that says a woman of inner beauty that is specifically dedicated to the self-love struggles I’ve experienced. Self-love, worth, and value are not measured by what’s on the outside but what’s on the inside.

An important question to ask yourself when you’re wanting to change something about yourself or you don’t like something about yourself ask yourself do I not like it because I don’t like it, do I want to change it because I want to change it or am I doing this because I’m afraid of the opinions of others?

Self-love is a foundation of our everyday lives and the decisions you make to better yourself for happiness will all fall back on your self-love, your self worth, and how you value yourself.

We need to stop placing our worth in the hands of others and allowing others to define our value. The Dove commercial you’re more beautiful than you think is a perfect example of body positivity. In the commercial, there’s an artist who makes two sketches of the individual, one sketch of them describing themselves and one sketch of a friend/family member sketching them.

The purpose of this commercial is to show how we view ourselves in comparison to how others view us. A lot of times people view us as beautiful, smart, and outgoing but are so stuck in our negative views of ourselves we fail to realize that there are so many people who love and admire us.

The first step to boosting your self-love and confidence is to find what self-love means to you. Second: remove yourself from negativity this can be friends, family members whatever is not bringing you peace and uplifting you, you need to remove it. Social media can also hurt how you love yourself.

You may start to compare yourself to what you see for example Instagram models. One thing I’ve done is to follow daily affirmations and positive accounts that way whenever I login into my Instagram account I see nothing but positivity. People show you what they want you to see on social media people only show their success, wealth, and relationships. Three: eat well and nourish your body. This will not only take care of the inside but it will also reflect on the outside. Four: mediation, meditation is a great method to help your mental state.

There are so many different meditations that you can listen to, to open your heart, mind, and soul that will help work on a better visualization of yourself. Five: stay productive, if you’re staying active and doing things you enjoy this will decrease the negative thoughts that may linger in your mind.

There are many more things you can do to help increase self-improvement and self-love. These are five of the things that helped me and can be beneficial to you as well. Self-love takes time but it’s not impossible.

The moment you learn your self-love you’ll be amazed by how many others love you too.