Welcome 3 What is self-love? 5 Why is it so hard? 9 Keys to self-love 13 It’s ok to feel bad 15 Listen to yourself 19 Identify false beliefs 23 Start living now 27 Take action 30 Self-love checklist 34 Next steps 35

Welcome and thank you so much for joining me and trusting me on

this journey to ‘live the whole’ through greater self-love. I’m so happy to be here with you as you explore, learn, and grow into self-love.

We’ll start out talking about what self-love is and why you’re struggling with it. Then we’ll get stuck into it, and you’ll find the 5 keys to self love, each with 3 practical, actionable tools you can use. By the end of this book, you’ll have the knowledge and tools you need to make serious progress into self-love.

Wishing you a journey full of love,

self-love

noun

regard for one's own well-being and happiness (chiefly considered as a desirable rather than narcissistic characteristic).

Self-love is about appreciation, growth, and respect for oneself. It’s one of the best things you can work to build and maintain on your health journey because, when you love and respect yourself, the motivation to treat yourself right is so much stronger. It’s something you actively have to grow and use, and your self-love is always in motion, shifting and changing.

You’re about to find out not only why it’s so difficult to have a firm sense of self-love, but practical and easy things you can start doing right now to get some self-directed love into your life.

• Of course you struggle to love yourself – where on earth would you learn otherwise?

When you look in the mirror, think about yourself at work, or consider yourself in social situations, do you feel:

Most of us are in the second category, at least some of the time, about some of our life areas. We see many flaws, remember past hurts or failing, and we not only fail to love ourselves, but we put endless conditions on our love and acceptance. Conditions like:

“I’d be better if I lost weight” “I’d be happy if I wasn’t such a loser”

“I’ll feel better about myself when I’m in a relationship”

And this is totally understandable. It makes complete sense. Of course you struggle to love yourself – where on earth would you learn otherwise? Unless you were lucky enough to come from a family who modelled great self-love behaviours, you probably only started to learn about it during your adult life, when patterns and thought-habits are already formed.

It's too easy to tell you, "Love yourself." The real goodies come when you know how to do it.

In this book, you’ll learn 15 excellent, practical tools you can use to start changing these thought-habits. They are tools I use with both clients and myself, and I am confident that they will help you too. It's too easy to tell you, "Love yourself." The real goodies come when you know how to do it.

1. It’s ok to feel bad. Take responsibility for your feelings.

2. Listen to your inner self. Thought, reflection, meditation.

3. Identify your false beliefs. Be willing to change.

4. Accept who, where, and what you are right now. Right now.

5. Take action. It’s important to ‘do’.

Yeah, so maybe you feel like crap. Maybe you’ve felt like crap for a while. That is ok. It’s normal. You’re fine.

Maybe someone said something or did something that hurt you and instead of just feeling the hurt, accepting it, and either moving on or addressing the issue, you’ve convinced yourself you’re in the wrong, have no need to feel bad, and should just get over it without ever actually feeling that pain. This

doesn’t make you a mature, reasonable person like you think – it’s an avoidance technique you’re using to wiggle your way out of having to feel real pain or discomfort. The thing is, that pain and discomfort is still there – it’s just going to go underground and crop up as body image issues, negative self-talk, or even physical health complaints.

You feel bad or hurt for a reason – a real reason that deserves to be heard. Your body and brain and sending you a clear message that something is wrong. If you touch a hot stove and burn your hand do you try to explain away the pain of that burn? Tell

yourself it’s unjustified, not real, or silly? No, you nurse your hand and learn not to touch the stove again. The same is true of emotional pain and hurts. Something hurt you, it was real, and if you take the time to listen and learn from it, you begin to foster more self-love.

• Don’t shun feeling bad. Sit with it and feel its message.

• Write it out – detail everything about the situation that you can – people, places, feeling, things, events, thoughts, sensations, anything. You don’t have to do anything with this information if you don’t want to, but it’ll help you think it out and feel your feelings.

• Talk to someone you can trust. Someone who loves you (or who you’ve paid to listen – it’s a legit strategy!) and just ask them to listen without offering solutions or advice. Then just talk about your feelings, what happened, why it hurt you, and all the details you can think of. This can actually help you not only recognise and respect your hurt, but strengthen social ties as well.

Do you ever feel frazzled and like you spend all your time looking after others? Parents, kids, partner, friends, co-workers… you pay attention to them and their problems, but rarely take time out to get to know yourself and where you’re at. This is super common!

You’re definitely not alone here. But, with any good relationship you know that regular, quality communication is key, and your relationship with yourself is no different. So, start taking some time to listen to, speak to, and treat yourself as a friend.

• Write a pleasure inventory – people, places, things, events, feelings, thoughts, sensations, foods, music, anything that gives you pleasure. How many of these things do you get on a daily basis?

• Write a self-love- letter to yourself. If that's too difficult for you, pretend you are your mother/brother/aunt/best friend and write to yourself from that point of view. Include anything at all- things to be proud of, great personality traits you have, things to love about your appearance, anything! As long as it is true, positive , and loving. It can be a longer letter over multiple pages, or a quick note saying something like “Hey, you're awesome! You aced that project at work last week helped cheer-up your brother, and your legs look kickass in that new skirt! Love, me.”

• Try some new self-care routines. It’s amazing how looking after

ourselves physically can make us feel more loved. There are so many things you can do or try here. The sky’s the limit, really. You can work with:

Your hair – new style, cut, color, shampoo, take more time styling it…

Make-up – wear some, wear none, try a new product, new color, take a class…

Clothes – buy something new, make a new outfit from what you have, accessorise…

Body care and grooming – shave, don’t shave, new body wash, paint your nails, or don’t…

Try taking supplements – Omega-3, pro-biotics, and/or curcumin are a great start.

Create a morning and evening routine for yourself where you take some time out.

We all think things that aren’t true. We all believe things that are also just plain untrue – and most of our negative self-beliefs fall under this category. Even if you logically know you’re cute, smart, and get on well with people, you still have negative thoughts and beliefs about your weight, intellect, and that you’re socially below average. You might also believe things about the world that are also just totally false. Beliefs such as:

• I always say the wrong thing. I’m so awkward.

• I’m not good enough to get that job/relationship/health goal

• I am unsuccessful and don’t deserve to be

Yes, these beliefs may be rooted in real past experiences, and you may THINK you’ve listened to your hurt or pain and learned an important lesson (isn’t that what I just advised you to do a few pages ago?), but what’s happened here is that you’ve taken that pain,

lesson, or advice and made it a generalized belief that is not serving you or your goals. These beliefs hold you back from living your fullest life and giving your gift to both the world and yourself. They make you smaller and take away your glow. It’s not cool.

• A couple of good ways to identify your false beliefs is to: a) look out for mass generalizations you have about the world and the people in it; and b) listen for the ideas you have about yourself and the world that all your family and friends argue with you about or tell you aren’t true. Both of these things are good indicators that an idea might need some more examination.

• If you have the time and inclination, learning about philosophy can be a great way to open up to new ways of thinking. You can read up online, get some books from the library, or even take on of the free courses offered online through an organization like Coursera or edEX.

• If you identify one of your false beliefs and want to change it, you can also try hitting it head on. Write it down and plan an argument and evidence against it. This can be REALLY hard. Once you’ve got a great comeback to the thought, use it every time you notice yourself having that thought. Your inner-dialogue might go something like:

- “I always say the wrong thing. I’m so socially awkward and it’s hard for me to make friends.”

You reply with:

- “That’s not true. I have some really great friends. The most important thing is to be friendly and smile. And remember yesterday when I told that joke and everyone laughed? I rocked that! I’m a fun, friendly person.”

• I’ll be happy when…

• I’ll be fully myself when…

• I’ll be the person I want to be when…

• Things will be better when…

• I’ll get my happily ever after when…

When is that ‘when’ going to come? Really, you’ve got two options here: Now or Never. You can start feeling, acting, and living your best life and self now… or you can wait for circumstances to hand it to you and it’ll never come. I know you think you’ll feel great AFTER you’ve lost the weight/got the job/ are married, and you probably will – but the lasting real happiness starts now. And it’s something you have to practice and create, not something you get as a result of ‘x’. So how can you start cultivating your happiness, wellness, and true self?

• Try a ritual for self-love.

• Celebrate your wins – each and every one, big and small.

• Write down you ‘whens’ and then brainstorm ways you can start to feel or live that now, without changing a thing. Definitely keep working towards your bigger goals and accomplishments, but release yourself from the idea that your happiness or self is contingent on achieving it.

Release yourself from the idea that your happiness or self is contingent on anything.

As with any relationship, your relationship with yourself takes work – not just of the thinking and reflecting kind, but of the real-world physical kind too. Above, you’ve read about lots of ways you can start working on different aspects of your self-love relationship. Now, here are three really powerful homework assignments for you. These are tools I really use in my coaching work, and you’re getting them here for free!

1. Little things I like about me 2. Smile alarm 3. I like to move it

This activity is just so powerful because it’s helping re-wire your brain. Research tells us that once we start thinking about certain things, or in a certain way repeatedly, those neural pathways get progressively strengthened and means we are much more likely to continue with those patterns. If those patterns are negative, self-critical, or un-loving, it’s easy to see how we get caught up having trouble with our self-worth and love. So, let’s consciously and deliberately alter those paths.

Every night when you get home from work, or just before bed, write down three things you liked about yourself today. It can be anything from ‘My legs looked great in those shoes’, to ‘My son told me he loves me’, to ‘I smiled at a stranger on the street’. First thing in the morning, read over the list and feel those good feels. Then get on with your day. Do this every morning and evening for a month and see how you feel. You should be feeling much more positively about yourself, and the little things should become easier and easier to see.

This may seem overly simplistic, and a bit weird. But try it – just for one day. All you have to do is set an alarm on your phone to go off every hour from waking to sleeping, and when the alarm goes off you have to smile while thinking about yourself and your life. The thoughts can be simple, but they must be positive and you have to put a smile on your face while you do it. “I love my body”, “I’m a great parent”, “My job is rewarding”… anything you like.

Why? There’s a thing called the ‘facial feedback hypothesis’ and it

states that if we smile (or frown) we will start to feel the emotions linked to that facial expression. This is, like the activity above, about re-wiring your brain to be more accepting of self-love. If you think good things, deliberately, and then make yourself feel happy by smiling, you create a positive feedback loop linking good thoughts and good feelings, making your brain more likely to continue doing so all by itself.

Move your body in a way you love. I’ve written about this before because I think it is just so important. We all have ways we like to move our bodies. Movement that make us feel alive, relaxed, and joyous. Personally, I love dance, yoga, and hiking. Maybe you love crossfit, or weightlifting, or biking, or gentle walking, or playing with your kids or dog each day… you’re limited only by your imagination. Aim to move in ways that make you feel more connected to your body and more in love with yourself and life. To really level this up, you can journal about your movement experiences and how they’re making you feel about yourself.

⃝ I know it’s ok to feel bad. I take responsibility for my feelings.

⃝ I listen to my inner self.

⃝ I can identify and change my false beliefs.

⃝ I try to accept who, where, and what I am right now.

⃝ I’m taking action and working on my self-love.

I hope you’ve learned some tools to help you work on your self-love goodness. I firmly believe that health behaviours are almost pointless if they don’t come from a place of gentleness, warmth, and love.

From here you can continue to mindfully learn and practice self-love. These tools

will work for you no matter where you’re at on your journey. If you need a little more help with this, or any other area related to health,

wellness, food, body image, weight, or fatigue – reach out to me. You can contact me in a few ways:

Also, if you found this ebook interesting or useful, share it with your friends.

Support each other in you self-love efforts.