Start Loving Yourself: Increase Your Self Image
By: Hani A Al-Qasem
Tags: Love Yourself, Self Help, Love, Self Improvement, Self Love

You are the most important person in the whole universe. You live your life through your thoughts!

In case you forgot to remind yourself this morning… your butt is perfect. Your smile lights up the room. Your mind is insanely cool. You are more than enough. And you are doing an amazing job at life. L.K. Elliott

You probably know the value you get when you eat healthily and exercise regularly; where you keep your health and fitness motivation going strong to achieve your health and fitness or your weight goal.

But do you realize the immense value of loving yourself and having a high self image?

In other words, do you know the importance of loving yourself; how important it is for you to think, feel and see yourself in a good, loving way?

A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success. Joyce Brothers

Unfortunately, not too many people realize that self image may be more important than the healthy lifestyle that they may be leading.

They may eat correctly, exercise frequently, they may enjoy their work, visit friends, go out to restaurants, yet they do not give a second thought to exercising their self image.

You see, when you have a high self image, you look and feel happier in most areas of your life; loving yourself will help you get rid of feelings of being less than others, feelings of worthlessness and undeservingness, and also reduce many of the self sabotaging, limiting thoughts of self doubt.

I highly recommend you watch this video by Jen Oliver entitled: How to Love Yourself to the Core (it’s 17 minutes long).

Although you may know how to lead a healthy lifestyle, you may know the fundamentals of eating healthy, or how to keep the momentum of your health and fitness motivation going strong, yet, you may not know what steps you could take to improve your self image or how you could increase the level of loving yourself.

There are a few short steps to raise your self image.

Love yourself. It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out. Jenn Proske

The first step to loving yourself is vital.

It all starts with you deciding what it is that you would like to become, and what things you are good at or enjoy doing.

Do you enjoy writing or reading poems or short stories?

Do you enjoy playing badminton or squash, playing football with your children, visiting places of interest with your friends?

Dow you have fun watching drama movies or TV series?

Do you look forward to walks along the river, or gardening?

Take a few minutes and come up with a list of all the things and activities that you enjoy doing, participating in or watching; things that give you joy and pleasure, happiness, and perhaps a sense of fulfillment.

Beauty is when you can appreciate yourself. When you love yourself, that’s when you’re most beautiful. Zoe Kravitz

Your next step is to take part in what you enjoy and are good at, involving yourself in that activity or activities as often as possible.

As you partake in the activities that you not only enjoy but are good at, your self image will automatically and inevitably increase.

The more you take an active role in such activities, the quicker your self image will increase. The sooner you will feel yourself loving yourself more and more.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. Buddha

I am an advocate of keeping journals. They are great in keeping track of where you are now and, when you look back through your journal, you will see how much you have improved.

Always jot down your feelings, your thoughts and your successes, preferably on a daily basis, and as you lay in bed ready to go to sleep.

If you had a game of badminton with a friend during your lunch break, what were your feelings during and after the game?

Did you enjoy it?

Were you happy with the way you played?

Did you feel good and skillful?

Did you laugh a lot as you played, or did you laugh a little?

Be honest with yourself and write down everything; all your feelings and emotions.

By the way, this is your private journal, no one need know about it, so be honest and very open.

You’ve got to love yourself first. You’ve got to be okay on your own before you can be okay with somebody else. Jennifer Lopez

As you get more familiar with your feelings and emotions, you will spot areas where you did not feel quite as happy, joyful or comfortable as you would like, where your self image felt somewhat deflated.

Find out why you think that may be; analyze why you didn’t feel happy that day, or during that activity, where your self image was not as high as you had hoped it would be.

Write down all the reasons, all the feelings, emotions and thoughts as to why you think may be the causes of such a deflation.

Again, honesty is key here.

Remember, the objective here is to allow you to get to the point where you have a high self image, where loving yourself becomes automatic; where loving yourself is as natural as the air you breathe.

Eat like you love yourself. Move like you love yourself. Speak like you love yourself. Act like you love yourself.

Once done, your next step is to make it your goal to sculpt a positive self image in that area, in that activity, and take consistent action until you have the level of self image that you are after; where loving yourself has skyrocketed.

One easy and quick way to do this is to identify yourself with a successful image; as someone who already portrays the self image that you desire. Find such a person and emulate him or her.

And always remember to praise and reward yourself along the way.

Always celebrate your successes.

Now, there will be times where you will have a hard time getting motivated to play that game of badminton or squash, or you feel too lazy to go out for a walk along the river bank with a friend.

Those times are inevitable.

You feel unmotivated to take action to do the things that you want, to take the necessary steps to get you where you want to be?

At those times, do you find yourself wrestling with your negative thoughts that only seem to bring in to your life more challenges?

Now, let me ask you, would you like to change all that?

I am sure you said yes, so here’s how:

You have to be aware of the words that you use. When you spot yourself saying something negative or limiting, STOP immediately. Say CANCEL. If you say to yourself that you’d much rather stay in and eat a burger while laying on your couch instead of meeting up with a friend to see a movies, say and repeat the word CANCEL, until that lazy notion subsides.

2. Imagine or visualize a barrier around your body or mind, or perhaps an image of the thought bouncing against your head and flying off somewhere into space. The idea is to DEFLECT the negative thought.

3. AFFIRM, think or say and repeat a positive thought that opposes the one you just deflected. This thought is a positive statement or an affirmation, but done precisely. Not your typical ineffective affirmation.

Effective affirmations are purposely chosen words and phrases that replace old, limiting, self sabotaging thoughts and beliefs with new empowering ones. It is important to word your affirmations in an effective manner so they can bring about the changes that you are seeking.

For example: If you repeat this affirmation: “I am successful”, do you think it would be effective enough to make any real change?

Hardly.

You know that this statement is not true, and no matter how hard you work on that affirmation it will be rejected by your subconscious mind because it conflicts directly with the beliefs that you already have.

And, after time, your self image will go down because you don’t see or feel yourself as a successful person.

So how do you go around this?

You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.

The answer is very simple. You word your affirmations or statements in a way that will be more readily accepted by your subconscious mind; by creating less resistance.

So going back to the example above, it will be far more effective and believable to reword the affirmation to something like:

“I have a passionate desire to succeed. Success is my one and only option.”

I am sure you can tell this affirmation sounds more accepting.

The question I sense you asking is how long will it take for changes to take place.

There really is no set time.

It really depends on how intense your opposing beliefs are. If you have an intense negative belief around success, as in this example, it will take longer for the change to take place.

The best suggestion I can offer is to keep reciting effective affirmations over and over until you feel the change is taking place.

Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.

Here are a few effective motivating affirmations that are believable and will not face an impenetrable wall of opposing unconscious beliefs.

The affirmations will make you a master of self motivation, allowing you to move further ahead in life:

“I learn all that I can from setbacks and move on.”

“I persist until I reach my objectives.”

“I see opportunities all around me, and I am optimistic about my success.”

“I am enthusiastic about everything that I do, and I give it my best effort.”

“Each and every day is filled with accomplishments.”

Below are five self image affirmations you can repeat to yourself as often as you can, especially as you drift off to sleep:

“By loving myself, I allow others to love me as well.”

“Every day it becomes easier for me to love myself.”

“I am always kind to myself.”

“I am appreciated and valued at all times.”

“I am kind to myself by filling my mind with positive, inspiring thoughts.”

Love yourself first, because that’s who you’ll be spending the rest of your life with.

Get motivated and stay motivated to achieve more.

To keep your health and fitness motivation going strong, to raise your self image, to sky rocket loving yourself, remember the three empowering words you can live your life by when you don’t feel that great about yourself, or where you feel unmotivated to get up and go:

CANCEL, DEFLECT and AFFIRM.

Go and have fun with this!