To love yourself, you must first be self-aware of the person you are planning to love. We also believe that you must accept everything about the person you want to love – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And we also believe that you must be in a position to forgive the mistakes this person has made.
That’s why our practical advice on how to love yourself is a 4-step guide with these three main components:
- Self-Awareness
- Self-Acceptance
- Self-Forgiveness
And below, we’ll briefly explain how these three elements contribute to the 4-step guide to self-love.
So if you’re wondering what advice we have for you on how to love yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), below is the 4-step guide.
How to Love Yourself: A 4-Step Guide to Self-Love for Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
#Step 1: Become Self-Aware
Self-Awareness is important for many reasons.
It helps you become more intentional, know your strengths and weaknesses, own and learn from your mistakes, become more confident, ask for feedback and take it well, find emotional blind spots, and become a good listener, among many others.
In fact, we recently published a post on 10 reasons why self-awareness is important. And when it comes to developing self-love, becoming self-aware establishes a foundation on which to lay your love.
So, how do you become more self-aware?
The process is a little more complicated than emulating the 10 habits of self-aware people. And it requires careful observance of oneself as well as getting feedback from a friend who knows you well.
So to learn how to become self-aware, grab our 40-day Guide to Self-Love. It explains in detail what self-awareness is, why it’s important, and how to develop it.
#Step 2: Accept Yourself
Like learning how to become self-aware as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), learning how to accept yourself as you are is also as important.
Accepting yourself means owning up to every little or large aspect that makes you who you are. It means accepting your mistakes and not feeling bad for everything that you’ve ever done.
But the question is: How do you truly accept yourself?
How do you accept yourself for the unforgivable things that you’ve done? And how do you accept yourself if you already feel guilty and ashamed of the person that you are?
In our 40-day guidebook on self-love, we share practical tips and steps on how to accept yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).
Get the guidebook here to learn how accepting yourself makes it easier to love yourself and live fully as an HSP.
#Step 3: Forgive Yourself
To forgive yourself means taking responsibility for your actions and showing yourself compassion for every wrong you have done and regret.
This process is known as self-forgiveness and we cover it in week three of our 40-Day Guide to Self-Love.
And to achieve self-forgiveness, there are 4 widely-acknowledged and highly effective steps. They are known as the 4 Rs of self-forgiveness and they are as follows:
- Responsibility (accepting and showing compassion for oneself)
- Remorse (feeling remorse for the wrongs done)
- Restoration (making amends)
- Renewal (learning and growing from your mistakes)
These 4 Rs make up the 4 steps to self-forgiveness. And they are as similar to the 11 steps of AA as they are effective. Get your copy of the 40-day guide to self-love to learn more about these steps and how self-forgiveness contributes to loving yourself.
#Step 4: Practise Daily Self-Love Habits
While there may be contradictions on what self-love is, every party agrees that self-love is not a destination.
Instead, it’s an intentional practice of daily, weekly, or monthly habits that are primarily focused on helping a person become their best selves.
So while we may offer guidance on how to develop self-love, truly loving yourself requires a daily practice of self-love habits or activities.
And there are many to choose from depending on your individual preferences, so don’t feel tied to the ones we cover in our 40-day self-love guidebook.
In the End
This 4-step guide on how to love yourself when you don’t know how is exactly what we cover in our 40-Day Guide to Self-Love. However, this version of the guide is only a glimpse of what we talk about in the 124-page guide.
To learn more about how self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-forgiveness contribute to learning how to love yourself, get yourself a copy of the guide.
Each of these topics is an entire week in the guidebook, and every week is a series of daily tasks related to each topic.
So don’t struggle to love yourself when you have a guidebook ready to use. Get it here, implement the steps, and enjoy the many self-love benefits that come with learning how to love yourself.
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With love and kindness,
HSP Tools