Questions that will help you appreciate yourself more and make you love yourself
Self-confidence is a result of appreciating yourself for what you have done right and overcoming what you may have done wrong. This is possible only when you have a healthy relationship with yourself and this is what self-love is all about. But I agree, this is tough as from the very childhood we are taught to take care of others by sacrificing our own needs or our own feelings about whats going right or wrong in our own lives.This remains at the core of everything we do but we do not acknowledge most of the times.Learning to love ourselves as we are, helps us develop self-worth, and this in turn builds self-confidence.
Developing self-love becomes easy if you can understand the concept well. Self-love is not being selfish. It is in fact to become confident in life to take on any challenge for self and others. The tool that I use for my coaching clients in my sessions are a set of questions that you may ask yourself.
You should write the responses in your journalling book so that you are able to focus on the areas that is holding you back when it comes to self-love and how you can practically feel more loving and accepting of yourself. These responses can be used in future too if you are stuck again somewhere. Your responses may differ in different set of situations but they can be taken as the reference point.
The questions that you may ask yourself are:
- What did you do today that according to you was good and satisfying?
This question can be asked at the end of the day, each day. No need to struggle much with this. Think about simpler things like you may have saved a plant by watering it or taking care of it. May be you helped your child or your sibling by organizing a shelf. May be you just prepared coffee and you felt refreshed. It can be simple enough, but some of us can struggle with this. It doesn’t have to be anything big.
It is just that your brain notices the positive things you do that goes unnoticed because you are in the habit of taking yurself for granted, another indication of lack of self-love..
- How can you identify and attend to your needs more?
When you are not in the habit of loving yourself, you often overlook your needs and you might find yourself constantly putting other’s needs above your own. This will lead to neglecting self, that may cripple your efforts towards self-love. When you ask yourself about connecting with your needs, you are actually making space to consider what your needs are and the ways in which you can honour them.
- What gives you the feeling that “I am loved?” and how can you give that love to yourself to be happy?
You must have felt “loved” when other significant people in your life do something for you. That is, to find out what are some things other people do for you that make you feel loved? It might be through acts of service, a hug, holding hands, patting your back when you achieve something or words of affirmation.
Once you know this, you can consider how you can do more of this for yourself. This is really all about nurturing your relationship with yourself and reminding yourself that you deserve care and attention, without waiting for the care and attention of others.
- What do you need to forgive yourself for?
Sometimes you keep something lurking in the back of our mind that makes you blame yourself and stops you from loving ourselves. Most of the time, it’s something you need to forgive ourself for. Self-love can only really come through when you accept yourself fully and accept that you have made mistakes and aren’t perfect. So ask yourself, what do you need to forgive yourself for? Ones you identify, allow yourself the space to acknowledge and process your response.
- What would you tell a good friend in the situation you are into?
This question is helpful if self-love is something you find especially tough. If you find yourself struggling in a situation, ask yourself what would you tell a dear friend in case the friend is in the same situation and then try to say this to yourself.
It might feel awkward at first. You may want to try distanced self-talk at first, which is talking to yourself in the third person, but it can give you the distance you need to start really believing what you’re saying to yourself.
These questions may help if the problem is fresh and you can deal with it on your own. However, it’s important to note that this work is not easy if the issue is deep seated. In that case, you keep on stepping down on self-esteem and self-confidence or self-belief goes down the drain. At such times we need professional help. Developing self-love and self-confidence are something a Life Coach can really help with. After getting an insight into your issue, relevant and tailored questions about your experience are asked to help you uncover your way forward.