WAYS TO *ACTUALLY* PRACTICE SELF LOVE | healing guide inner work & being your own best friend

[Music] hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of a better you I am your host Fernando Ramirez and I'm happy to have you back here in today's episode we are going to be focusing on self love now this is a topic I've been wanting to cover for a while because obviously self- Lov is one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves and kind of paves the way for I feel like the rest of our lives the way that we treat ourselves lets others know how we should be treated and and

since we have to live with ourselves from the day we are born till the day we die it is in our best interest to become our own best friend and to learn how to radiate love in the most purest ways we can so in today's video we are talking about ways to actually practice self-love we are talking about healing inner work radiating love and ways to romanticize your life and add in little glimmers to make your life just a much happier place to live in and overall just work on our selfworth and walk around around

like we know we're that queen or King whatever it may be if you are new to my podcast welcome I'm so excited to have you here and thank you for clicking on this episode we talk about a whole bunch of self-development topics if you want to scroll through my podcast I have so many different episodes on so many different topics ranging from lifestyle to Beauty to mindset to reflection to little how-to guides there is so many topics we talk about so definitely go and take a little scroll if you haven't already make sure you are

subscribed to the a better you you YouTube you follow the a better you by Fernanda Instagram and you stay in touch with the community because I'm always active on the Instagram and all the other social media platforms as my own personal one Fernando Ramirez before we get into this episode I just wanted to give a little life update for me and that is that this is my last episode recording at home before I actually go away to Europe I'm going to Paris London and a few places I think in Portugal but I may be wrong

about that actually leave tomorrow afternoon and so I'm going to be gone for 2 weeks but I think I'm going to bring my podcast equipment over there so I might be filming some episodes abroad which is kind of exciting I haven't been to Europe since last year I was in Paris and I'm so excited to be going this time I will be doing some solo traveling some traveling with friends fashion week is going to be at the same time that I'm over there in Paris so that's going to be really exciting I feel like I

really need this time to reflect and bring my journal and bring my Vlog and kind of just take you guys along honestly with my trip I haven't done any solo traveling in like 2 years and I did it a lot 2 years ago I feel like I went to Montreal a few times by myself and I feel like I just grew so much while doing that my apologies you guys the audio might have just been weird in the first few minutes of this episode my microphone kind of went in and out but we are back

we're good we're here yeah that's all I want to say about my Europe trip there's going to be so much fun stuff going on over there anyways let's get into the episode that was a short little intro as I said we're talking about self- Lov I feel like over the past month I have been doing so much reflection I've had some person personal things go on in my life that made me just kind of reflect on who I want to be and who I want to be moving forward and what kind of person I want

to be and what kind of Aura I want to have and just in general I feel like I've been working on my aura and trying to radiate love and be love and also I feel like when times of sadness roll around as they should you know everyone goes through their ups and downs the way that I fill my own cup and the way that I raise my own vibrations is by doing the things that make me feel good and you know when it's doing self-care when it's treating yourself with respect when it's working out eating

healthy drinking water giving yourself little sweet treats giving yourself little gifts telling yourself affirmations those are all things that make me feel better and they are all literally acts of love to yourself since I've been doing that this past month and just like doing things for me and things that make me happy and like filling my own cup I've realized how much I do love myself you know what I mean all of these little things that in my head are just like good habits or lifestyle choices are actually acts of self-love and I feel like

having that realization and also seeing it in my friends like when my friends do those acts of kindness towards themselves and realizing that it's selflove makes me more excited to do them knowing that that's the intent behind them do you know what I mean like it's one thing to just do the things but when you reframe it and you think to yourself I'm doing these things out of love for myself it's just so much sweeter and it's also more wholesome when you can identify that when your friends are doing it or when your family members

are doing it or when anyone else is doing it around you and you realize that all these acts of kindness that they are doing to themselves into others is an act of love I feel like something about that is just so sweet and so anyways moral of the story all of that inspired me to give you guys some practical ways to practice self-love so that we can move into this next year and I guess the last bit of this year with a lot more love for ourselves and the people around us I think when you

show love to yourself and you treat yourself like you want to be treated you are able to show up in this world in this life a lot happier a lot Kinder and I think we all need that I also love that I feel like the collective like everybody is on this journey of like going to therapy and like doing their journaling and working on their mental health and I feel like we are all moving like closer to where we want to go and I want to be of Aid in that journey and help whoever is

listening honestly to do these things more often because you know if I Inspire even one person two people it's a change reaction and that's what we want here so let's get into the episode and let's learn about how we can choose ourselves first and show ourselves as much love as we can so first up what does self-love really mean self- Lov is a way to appreciate yourself stemming from actions that support our psychological emotional and physical and spiritual growth loving yourself means holding yourself in a high regard taking care of yourself and being happy with

where you are in life as for the opposite when you don't love yourself and when somebody does not show themselves self-love it is very apparent and it is not a path you want to take somebody that has a lack of self- Lov is somebody who will shrink themselves to conform to what someone else wants them to be it can be somebody who lacks boundaries who has negative selft talk somebody who engages in unhealthy relationships somebody who does not prioritize themselves or their self-care somebody who is overworking or has a lot of self-doubt or just chooses

to overall not work on themselves as we can see there are obviously two very different paths there in the version of the people who love themselves and actively work on their self-care they are the ones practicing the positive selft talk maintaining their boundaries having healthy relationships in their lives are treating themselves with respect and as we said earlier but I kind of like that sentence so I want to resay it they are holding themselves with high regards so obviously when listing out like what are the qualities of somebody who loves themselves and what are the

qualities of somebody who doesn't love themselves I feel like they are very obviously different they are like two drastically different roads and I feel like when you say them like that it's like well why wouldn't why wouldn't you pick the one of self- Lov but I feel like a lot of people actually are choosing the opposite not necessarily by choice but maybe they are in the wrong environments or they just don't have a good support system around them so it's like easy to fall into those bad habits and into those negative loops and cycles and

so I feel like I want to say if that is you right now and first of all you're watching this video you're already taking the first step to trying to move into a direction of self-love and trying to better yourself and I feel like that is the most important thing if you didn't care about improving or wanting to work on your own self- Lov you wouldn't even be watching this video in the first place so I kind of just wanted to say that and if you haven't been working on your self-love and you're like you

know I'm just going to give this episode a try or on the other hand even though the benefits of self-love and the characteristics of somebody who has self Lov seem like such positive things and you might be thinking to yourself like if these are obviously such good traits to have then why am I not following through with my self-love practices a few other ways to motivate you to be on your self-love journey is the fact that once you start incorporating these habits and these rituals To Love Yourself deeper there are so many benefits that come

along with it for one you will have an increase in confidence and your aura will be expanding you will be able to manifest so much quicker when you enter rooms when you try to go for opportunities people will feel the self- Lov radiating off of you and not only will they want to give you opportunities but they will be attracted to you just by your energy if that alone doesn't make you want to work on your self- love I don't really know what does because when I think about the fact that working on my aura

is genuinely going to attract better things into my life it just makes the answer so clear that I have to go down that path because there is no other option not only will you have opportunities people situations get attracted to you because your energy is expanding it is filled with love but a changing quality will come into your life you might have higher quality friends people situations opportunities come to you rather than just quantity and it is the quality things that we are looking for you will have an increase in your quality of life and

your mental health will be so much better by working on these things this is like one of those examples of when your mental health is not doing well and then you start doing the healthy habits and the healthy things and then all of a sudden you feel better and you're just like why didn't I do these things sooner I'm giving you that warning right now you'll start doing all the right things and you will be coming back being like literally that's all I needed to do and my mental health is already so much better not

only that but once you start to prioritize self- Lov and work on your own self- Lov you will have an increase in motivation in productivity and creativity authenticity in joy in wanting to improve your social life in wanting to maybe advancing your career life like I just feel like when you are oozing self-love you are just so much more motivated and have that extra boost of energy to attack whatever it is in your life with a better attitude I know when I'm not focusing on the self-care habits that make me feel like I love myself

I literally just want to be the worst version of myself I want to lay in bed I want to watch TV I want to eat un healthy and it's really just a horrible cycle to be in honestly I feel like bad attracts bad so it's like if my mental health is bad you just want to do all the bad things and that's not what we want and now we have a word from our sponsor today at Shopify I don't know about you guys but whenever I think of aloe or skims I always think about how

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is ways that you can actually start to practice self-love and like actionable things that you can do before we get into talking about the reasons I want to talk about something that I did two weeks ago that kind of also started this self- Lov Journey so 2 weeks ago I went to ano iic acupuncture appointment it was a girl in Vancouver that my friend recommended she went to her and said that she had such a good experience with her and that she did like raike healing and kind of like spiritual healing she's a certified energy

healer as well as a wellness Energy Medicine coach and so anyways my friend went to her and so she recommended me going to her as well and so I thought might as well why not try this could help my mental health I guess or it could be interesting it could be cool anyways I went to her and she was so helpful we talked a lot she asked me a bunch of different questions she asked me about myself one of the things that she recommended for me is to set more boundaries she even gave me a

crystal which I forget the name of it now but it was like a green Crystal and she said that it was helpful in setting boundaries the reason for why this is so important is because you need to protect your energy and make sure that it is yours that you are working on it and that nobody is taking away your energy so this was kind of the beginning of the self-love journey and realizing why setting boundaries is so important so if you want to start working on your self- love I recommend starting here it is prioritizing

yourself choosing yourself first and cutting out anything in your life that is not serving you anymore cutting out sounds a little bit drastic but if it means distancing that might be a better word distancing yourself or cutting things out or saying no more often all of those things are an act of self- Lov because you are putting yourself first for yourself you can maybe look at your work life your social life your family life and see if there's anything that is actively taking away your energy or making you give your energy in ways that are

not actually productive and focus on setting those boundaries setting boundaries is not rude it is not unfair if it is taking away from your life your energy then it is completely valid to set those lines and also I think people will respect you and also you will gain more confidence in yourself when you have strong boundaries I think when somebody doesn't have boundaries and they kind of let themselves get all walked on that is in no way honoring yourself or protecting your energy the next thing that the spiritual healer recommended me was to journal and

I actually went to a little Crystal shop right after my appointment and I actually bought a new Journal it is so cute and it's like looks super handmade it's honestly a little bit ugly like I can't tell if I like it or not but something that I did when I chose this journal and something that I've been doing recently randomly is just picking the thing that speaks to me first if that makes sense like I'll just like look at an array of say for example journals and whichever one I looked at first or I can't

look away from I will just pick that one because it feels kind of intuitive and I'm just like you know what I'm just going to honor whatever my intuition picks first so anyways I picked this journal which is like lowkey kind of ugly but I'm just going to keep it because if my intuition picked it then I'm going to listen to it which is also just like side note probably another way to practice self- Lov which is just picking what your intuition picks and honoring that decision and not questioning it just having confidence in it

so anyways I picked this journal and I've been doing a lot more journaling recently and even my friends have been doing this as well over the past few days and they've said that it's helped them so much even if you don't know what to journal about you could just set a 5-minute timer at the very beginning of your day and just Journal whatever it is that's on your mind sometimes even just doing a little bit of a brain dump is helpful sometimes writing down what you're going to be doing that day can be helpful or

I feel like in my case sometimes you know when you tend to have like feelings and you don't really know how to express them or who to express them to just writing them down I feel like allows you to kind of work through them and sometimes honestly makes you realize that a situation isn't as big as you've built it up to be journaling will allow you to process your emotions a lot better you'll probably develop a lot more emotional intelligence and truly just get to know you better and at the end of the day with

this self-love journey I feel like getting to know yourself better is the root of the whole thing you can even do some self-love Journal prompts such as what are you most proud of yourself for what are you most grateful for you could describe your perfect day you could talk about the features that you like about yourself most you could write down some of your favorite personality traits overall just like writing things about yourself that you genuinely like about yourself I actually did this in my journal and I wrote down some statements that I believe to

be true and it's kind of like working on your self-concept which I'm not sure if you've heard of I guess that concept before but it's kind of like writing down and mentally processing who you think you are and you can make this version of yourself whatever you choose to be like you could say like I am the most confident person when I walk in any room I navigate all conversations with ease I am somebody who works really hard I am somebody who's very creative and making those statements about yourself is kind of like almost as

if you're writing yourself into a story book you know you're creating that concept of yourself and so I did this in my journal and I even wrote kind of like the things that I like most about myself and just getting really familiar with those traits so if somebody asks you and I was actually thinking about this today like if somebody asked me one of those three interviews what makes you confident I would probably tell them like I'm really confident in the traits about myself that I love and there's a lot of traits from my authentic

self that I love some other Journal prompts that you can ask yourself that aren't so like happy just talking about the things that you love about yourself which is all good things there's also questions that you can ask about yourself which are more involving I think your Shadow Self and like the deeper parts of yourself that you may repress which actually acknowledging them and like working through them and doing that inner work will eventually lead you to have more love for yourself those types of questions are ones like these ones such as what is one

thing I can forgive myself today for what beliefs do I hold about myself that no longer serve me how do I speak to myself when I make a mistake what activities make me feel most connected to my authentic self in what areas of my life do I feel most confident in what areas of my life am I the hardest on myself in what are areas of my life where I am hardest on myself what childhood experiences shaped my current relationship with self-love etc etc so those are some questions that are a little bit less just

like what are my favorite qualities of me and a little bit deeper but we'll actually get the juiciest answers out of you and I feel like those things are the most important thing when it comes to getting to know yourself and loving yourself another thing you can do which the spiritual healer did tell me was to practice self-compassion and to kind of be there for yourself a little bit more I think that is a huge thing with self- Lov and that is accepting yourself to show up the way you authentically are and that is enough

already you know you don't need to be your harshest critic you don't need to be so hard on yourself you don't need to be holding yourself to a standard that is unrealistic you can just embrace the version of yourself that is right now even if it's imperfect or even if it's messy or even if it's emotional just loving that version of yourself and almost imagining your inner child and you're kind of holding it you know like you're taking care of it you know you can't be mean to this inner child of yours so definitely self-compassion

is something that I feel like we all need to work on I remember there was this quote that I saw on Pinterest and it was saying like I'm never going to get this version of myself again so let me slow down and be with her for a minute and I think that that is so wholesome and so cute because it's almost like even though you are yourself in the present moment it's almost like you're envisioning you in a few years from now Reminiscing on this time of your life and so now that you actually are

here in the present it's like you're giving yourself that permission to be in the present moment and know that you're not going to get this version of yourself again so even if it's like I said imperfect or messy to have compassion for this version of yourself and know that things will change since we talked about inner child as well I think definitely nurturing your inner child is one of the biggest acts of self- Lov that you can do I know a lot of my friends are currently doing this but one of my friends in particular

she might be listening to this um I feel like recently has been really into doing activities and hobbies that her younger self would have loved to do and I feel like as an adult we all go through this situation where you know maybe you had Hobbies when you were younger that you used to love doing and then you went through a phase where you thought it was cringe or you thought like you were too old for it so you stopped doing it and then being an adult is actually just remembering all the stuff that you

used to love and actually embracing it and it makes you so much happier cuz you feel so much more connected to yourself that is definitely something that a lot of the people in my life are kind of doing right now and embracing and so this one specific friend that I'm talking about has really been embracing this side of herself and I think it's made her so much happier and feel more youthful feel more filled with love overall it's bringing more joy into her life more laughter more smiles and that in itself is an act of

self self love just accepting the things that you love embracing it and I also think when you are an adult you can kind of even do these things that you used to love but at your own what's the word like at your own pace or you can almost kind of fulfill what you wanted to do when you were younger but a lot better now that was a little bit confusing the way that I said it but for example if I used to love like fashion back in the day and it was one of like the

child version of me's like favorite hobbies but I didn't have the money to like splurge on the things that I liked or I couldn't really buy items that I wanted now that I'm older and I'm like embracing that side of myself again or doing something that my inner child would have loved I actually have the money to buy the things that I want and it's kind of like you're giving yourself your inner child what you always would have wanted but now you're able to provide it to yourself if that makes sense a different example could

be when I was younger I loved like making things out of polymer clay but I remember when I'd go to the store the clay was so expensive so my mom wouldn't buy it for me and that was fine you know I got to play with the clay that I did have and that was a Vibe but the other day I wanted to make like a DIY and I had to go buy polymer clay and so I went to the store and I was like oh my God this just feels like what my younger self would

have always wanted but now I actually have the money to buy like the nicest quality polymer clay I can buy a package with like every single color so that was kind of like rewarding my younger self as my older self if that makes sense for you this could be maybe drawing dancing playing Outdoors maybe it could be like watching your favorite childhood movies again just overall reconnecting with that Carefree energy playful energy and embracing ing that inner part of yourself because the more that you embrace your authentic self and you like that version of yourself

the more that you can show up authentically in this world and people will just be so attracted to that energy it is also said that unhealed childhood wounds can block self-love so the sooner that you work on all things inner child and healing that part of yourself the sooner you can feel free to express your own self-love another thing that you can do is practice some sort of mindful self-love activity or move your body in a way that promotes self- Lov so I feel like the most obvious ones are like doing some sort of self-love

guided yoga practice or a self-love guided breathing exercise or like a meditation I've honestly done those before and they are so helpful they just like affirm into your head the things that you obviously should know but like it's nice to hear again you can search these up on YouTube and there's so many this could literally just be like 10 minutes at the beginning of every day or before you go to bed just to get yourself in the right mindset and also to retrain your thoughts into positive ones if you are struggling with having those thoughts

of self-love it might feel a little bit weird at first you might not be comfortable doing it you might be like I don't even need this I already love myself but it actually is so helpful and it's just a little added practice that you can add into your routine if you feel like you're already doing everything else yoga is another one of those things that I feel like definitely brings self-love and overall is just so good for your energy movement in general really I think it is quite a known fact within like the spiritual whatever

that like if you are constantly sitting or you're not moving enough you're not stretching your body your energy can be stored in like certain chakras and it's like not expressed or moved and so doing those mindful movements where you're fully like in the present moment focusing on what your body is doing you're able to let that energy out and let it flow through you if this is like yoga or dance it can also help you embrace your feminine energy which is what I'm trying to do what probably you're trying to do what we're all trying

to do and overall just make you feel lot more connected to yourself another obvious but very important way to practice self- Lov is what you are actively putting into your body every single day by this I mean what kind of foods you are eating and if they are nourishing I know that eating unhealthy sometimes is what is the most fun what is the most satisfying but in reality that is not actually going to make you feel good and it's only damaging your body when you feed your body with the proper nutrients you will feel a

thousand times better and not only will you feel better but you will look better at the beginning of August I started my little carnivore diet it's like not really the carnivore diet but I've been cooking so much steak and eating a high protein diet and genuinely I feel significantly better like it's actually crazy how much better I feel and how much better I think I look I think that eating a high protein diet has made my fitness goals easier to achieve I feel like I'm less bloated I think my skin has cleared up my muscle

definition looks better and it does feel like an act of self-love because every time I do it I know that it's good for me I know that it's going to give me energy and I know that I'm like feeding myself properly rather than if I was eating like a sugary cereal breakfast in the morning and just like chugging coffees and nothing else that is not an act of self- Lov at all if I were you write down a list of the foods that you know make you feel good and actively try even if it's just

a week to choose foods that actually make you feel good if you know you have intolerances or like having too much sugar or too much salt makes you not feel good in your own skin or in your own body then actively avoid those types of foods and make decisions knowing that your future self is going to thank you for them I also feel like cooking for yourself is an act of self-love because you're taking the time to make something for yourself and also if you present it beautifully it's like nobody needed that except for you

and the fact that you're doing that for yourself does feel very wholesome to me I wanted to say I have a friend of mine that always comes to my mind when I think of self-love and she is so good at the concept of dating yourself because she Mak makes her life so beautiful and she goes out of her way to romanticize every little thing about her life and it's almost hard for somebody to compete with herself because she treats herself the best which is kind of like the best mentality you could even have like any

guy or girl or whoever that's going to come into her life and treat her worse than she's treating herself won't even make the cut because her standards are so high since we're talking about food here it just kind of reminded me that like sometimes she'll take the time to make these like extravagant meals for herself and yeah she'll take a picture of it send a picture whatever but it's like really that meal is for nobody else but for herself to enjoy and again I've said this in like a recent vlog or recent video or whatever

but like the way that you spend your days is the way that you spend your life and if every day you are going out of your way to make little moments so meaningful for yourself that is the way that you are living your life and you're creating a beautiful life for yourself filled with love another way that I think that she romanticizes her life and practices self-love is taking the time to get ready every day and to listen to her favorite music watching her favorite movies and journaling and taking her time to truly spend it

with herself and make her time well spent she's always trying to look her best and I just feel like when you spend a lot of time doing that and you really get to know yourself and you start to obviously really respect yourself and really love yourself you won't even allow people that would disrespect you into your life like that just won't even be an option I have another person that comes to my mind when I think about the food example and this person treats their body like a freak Temple I really admire them for that

they feel good they look good they know they feel good and they have so much pride they care more about like longterm gratification rather than short-term gratification such as eating something unhealthy that's going to make them feel like garbage 5 minutes later another thing that you can do is spend time in nature nature is extremely healing and I've talked about this I think in my last episode but ever since I moved to this new apartment my view is now the water and it's just nature I genuinely feel like this apartment was meant for me at

this point of my life because because it is so healing and I feel like I'm in my little healing Journey right now genuinely looking outside is so peaceful and I kind of feel like I'm immersed in nature all the time the other day when I was journaling I actually brought my journal to a park and I sat in the grass and I took my shoes off and I've been grounding a lot I had my back against the tree and I just felt like I was one with nature and it was super healing honestly a few

of my friends actively are always trying to go grounding and like take your shoes off and just like be in the grass and it feels so wonderful so if you don't already do that make sure to do that it is healing and nature just has such a calming energy you don't even have to you know be barefoot if you don't want to but going on a walk going on a hike maybe even playing tennis outside anything that involves just being in nature will make you feel so much better I also read in the creative act

that if you are trying to be more creative nature is one of the best teachers because there is so much movement there's so much Beauty there's so much going on outside that when you truly take the time to notice the little things there's just so much inspiration all around you the other thing I wanted to say is that this past week that I've been practicing self-love I actually did a photo shoot and I was kind of nervous because I've been done a photo shoot in a while and you know I was actually doing the opposite

of self- Lov at first I was you know having self-doubt I was feeling insecure I'm like what if these photos turn out bad like this could be just so humbling so humiliating whatever but I kind of let my ego go and I just said to myself like Fernanda this is going to be fun just embrace it just have fun and this photo shoot was fully in the vanen Botanical Garden so it was like in the grass in the trees in the flowers and honestly spending that day outside made me feel so much better and I'm

so excited for you guys to see the photos cuz I actually think they turned out really cute but one of the photos that we took was me running around the grass barefoot in like a dress holding roses and if that doesn't scream self- love spending time in nature embracing inner child playfulness and just overall grounding I don't know what does I genuinely felt healed after running around Barefoot and actually I thought to myself I haven't ran around in a park in so long and that felt so freeing so anyways I'm so excited to see those

photos cuz I feel like I'm going to be like genuinely happy and those photos will just like radiate Joy so I can't wait to see how those turned out another one of my friends is obsessed with the water and she's always finding bodies of waters to go in and she always talks about how she feels held by like mother earth like the water is genuinely holding her and I feel like that's so beautiful and although I don't have the biggest connection to the water I I feel like I have a big connection to like the

moon or the grass or something but but I just love that for her and I know that for her going into bodies of water and like finding those ways to get in is an act of self- Lov for herself because she knows how much she enjoys that and how much it is healing for her I only have a few more things I want to talk about in regards to self-love and what I do to practice this but the first one is embracing Solitude and spending time alone this is something that I have gotten so much

better at I feel like this is something that I've really learned to do over the past 3 years while I've been living alone and although it is hard at first to kind of sit with yourself and have anyone else to bounce off of and kind of just speak to I do feel like you end up learning so much about yourself and again that kind of goes in with the self-awareness reframing your thoughts instead of thinking of yourself as being lonely or spending time alone or just not having anyone to be with kind of changing that

mindset to thinking I am having quality me time and in fact I'm going to put an emphasis on quality just because you are spending time alone doesn't mean you need to sulk around and kind of almost feel bad for yourself that you don't have anyone to do things with but rather taking yourself on a date and enjoying that quality time that you have with yourself I feel like that is how the me time ends up being the best and the best well spent I also think it's very fair to yourself and very kind to yourself

if you schedule it in ahead of time for example at the beginning of the week when you are planning out what your schedule is going to be like you schedule yourself a me time night routine or maybe a solo movie night or a solo date night when you schedule it you are making time for it and it feels a lot more intentional which is a big factor of just this self-love Journey my favorite ways to spend time alone that really feel like I'm being one with myself and kind of taking myself on a little date

is going out for food by myself sometimes I'll just like literally stare at nothing but I will sometimes bring a book or bring my computer and I'll go get a new Cuisine or um I love going to coffee shops and getting my work done there I also love going to the park that's been something that I've been doing a lot recently and just kind of you know laying in the grass and kind of people watching and just watching the nature I also love going on a little hot girl walk and listening to music that makes

me really happy and really excited I also almost feel like getting ready before a night out kind of feels like intentional me time because I'm really taking effort into beautifying myself and it feels like an active self-love but those are some ways that I personally like to spend time alone and kind of embrace the Solitude not just feel guilty or sad that I'm not with anyone you can use this me time whether it be a hobby or a date idea to recharge yourself reenter yourself and kind of use this time to align with your higher

self I don't know about you guys but as much as I am an extrovert I do feel like I need my alone time to kind of feel grounded and kind of recenter my thoughts another thing that I think you can do during this moment as you are having time alone and spending time alone is noticing the thoughts that you have and what kind of selft talk you usually give to yourself I think it's actually a really good Journal prompt to write down the thoughts that you have most often because I think there is somewhere that

I read that a lot of the thoughts you have you end up repeating and it's just kind of like a cycle that you keep thinking about the same things so I feel like it's really important to know what it is that you constantly think about and if you need to change that or I don't know kind of fix that I also think that it's not obviously that easy to just flip a switch and start thinking positive thoughts if you have a pattern or a habit of thinking negatively about yourself or your situations or your surroundings

but at least being aware of it will kind of allow you to notice when it's happening and at least make the conscious decision to change it if you feel so once you take away these negative phrases or negative selft talk you can add in some affirmations I'm not going to go too into it because you guys know I talk about affirmations all the time but I do think that it is such a powerful tool to remind yourself of the qualities that you have the way that you want to speak to yourself and even just reminding

yourself about self-compassion words have a lot of power and you have to be so careful with what you say because if you're constantly saying bad things about yourself they will manifest and you cannot be your biggest hater you are truly all that you have and so if you are feeding yourself with all these kind words and just like affirmations you'll start to believe it and the same way that you will believe good things you will start to believe the bad things and we do not want that the last little tip I want to recommend you

guys to try regarding self-love is actually radiating love outwardly for example in my last video that I posted on YouTube about self-love I Incorporated a section where I did acts of kindness and what I did in that video was me and my friend actually went around the city we bought flowers and we gave them out to people as well as we wrote sticky notes with positive affirmations and just like kind words on it and we put it all around the city and this was such a nice activity honestly I highly recommend you guys to do

this if you've never done this before I also baked cupcakes and handed them out to my neighbors and kind of my little Community around me and it was so wholesome it honestly made me feel so good and doing acts of kindness is a chain reaction so when you do it to someone they will feel so good about themselves they may take that love and kindness and do it to someone else and that is what we want ultimately even if it's just one person it is a butterfly effect and so anyways my point was to say

that giving love allows you to embody it fully and not only is it making other people happy but it makes you feel happy I don't know if you have a time that you can remember but when you are doing acts of service for other people it always just makes you feel good so having some intentional time to do that I think is a great idea and will not only make the world around you a better place but it will make your inner World feel better if you're thinking of acts of kindness to do there are

so many free ones you can do online if you just search up acts of kindness you can also just give compliments to other people and one thing I want to say about that is a lot of the times I want to compliment someone but I don't know why you know you get a little bit shy to do it but just reminding yourself that everybody would like the compliment no one's going to be mad about it I don't think I've ever received a compliment and thought weird we ly of the person giving it to me like

I'm always just appreciative so let go of the ego compliment other people when there's something you like about them or something that they're wearing even complimenting people directly to their face kind of about their personality I think is super sweet and kind and goes even a little bit deeper than just a superficial compliment like something that they're wearing also being grateful for the people around you and letting them know that you're grateful for them I think is super kind and at the end of the day I think what's important to note here is that the

more love that you give the more love you will get in return you have to be the energy that you want to attract and I feel like that's a common quote that I see online but if you want love in return you will not get that through being self-hating through loathing through being insecure through having negative self- talk you need to love yourself first and that love will come your way anyways I'm going to end this episode here I hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble on about ways that you can actually practice self- Lov

and how I've been practicing self- Lov I just want to remind you guys again that self- Lov comes from within and if you truly want to love yourself you need to work on the inner stuff and really do all the healing that requires to express love outwardly and then you will just attract so much of it you will give so much of it loving yourself can change your life because the way that you move through the world is going to be different and your dream life is awaiting you on the other side of self- love

so anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up on the YouTube channel make sure to give it a riging on the podcast Channel swipe up and leave a comment I read everything you guys send me and yeah I'm just super appreciative of you guys so I love you and I will talk to you soon