For many students, time for self-love can often lose priority amid busy schedules. Engaging in habitual practices that encourage self-love can actually help with feeling burnt out. Having a positive attitude about oneself can make the heaviness of school feel a whole lot lighter.
Self-love is the higher attunement to positive attributes of oneself, said Joseph M. Cervantes, a clinical psychologist and director of the department of counseling at the College of Health and Human Development at Cal State Fullerton.
Here are a few ways to make self-love a good habit in your life, with the help of Cervantes:
Surround yourself with community
“What we have learned over the last decades is that what is most healing is not medication and not necessarily therapy, but having a caring community around you,” Cervantes said.
By surrounding yourself with others who spread the same positivity you want to see in the world, you will likely gain a sense of self-fulfillment.
Keep busy with a purposeful pastime
Whether it’s meditation, forms of martial arts or even yoga, Cervantes said that practices like this can offer support in personal centering and grounding.
An important factor in self-love is a practice known as grounding. With the world around you constantly changing, finding stability within oneself can provide a sense of internal calm.
One way to solidify this self-connection, without spending money is by simply going outside.
Third-year English major Michael Pradels practices this everyday.
“One of my favorite ways to practice self-love is by going outside,” Pradels said. “To get sunlight and to touch grass, and spending time in nature helps me feel a little bit more connected to myself.”
Stay grounded with self-reflection
Self-reflection is not only what keeps someone humble, but also what keeps one in tune with their emotions and feelings.
Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses and focusing on relationships can lead one down a path of contentment and avoid narcissism.
“Spend five to seven minutes max in personal reflection,” Cervantes said. “Because one needs the opportunity to have quiet on a daily basis.”
Recharge and replenish
Possibly the most overlooked factors to a healthy lifestyle are the amount of hours one spends recharging and the type of food consumed.
“We tend to minimize those kinds of things,” Cervantes said. “They really are the machinery that drives who we are as people and how we manage our lives everyday.”
Just like a car can’t run on an empty fuel tank or with a dead battery, people shouldn’t push themselves to do so either. Eat healthy when possible and go to bed early. All social media platforms and other forms of entertainment will still be there in the morning.
Add some color to a dull routine
Although it can be scary, safely pushing yourself out of your comfort zone from time to time can lead to new learning experiences and memories that one can always refer back to or reflect on. .
“Perhaps one time a month do something different,” Cervantes said. “Walk down a different pathway, take a bus for the first time and see where it takes you, just something different to break your routine. That brings in vibrancy, creativity and freshness.”
Be mindful of your actions
The golden rule learned early in our childhood is to treat others how we wish to be treated. It is important to not lose sight of as we grow through life. This can be done by practicing kindness, gratitude and compassion daily.
“When you practice a relationship that validates you and your contact with other people in the world, you bring it back to you,” Cervantes said. “And that really adds to the opportunity to feel yourself as a valuable human being and your sense of mission becomes more clear.”
Remember to treat yourself how you want to be treated and let yourself enjoy the little things, because self-love is no easy feat to navigate, but with time and patience, you can be your own best friend.
