Self-love Sing love songs to yourself

Body ody ody ody ody ody ody – Do you love yours?

Let’s use the example of self-love related to the body. Self-talk about your body. If we could broadcast thoughts about your body, what would it sound like? Would you say the same things you tell yourself to your best friend? To a stranger or even to someone you dislike? If you answered no to any of those questions, consider changing the way you talk to yourself about your body. It’s a nice concrete place to start working on good old self-acceptance. It also happens to be a place where many feel the need to focus based on cultural and other influences.

When I was small my mom and aunts were the most beautiful people to me. I would hear things like, “Oh my god I should not eat this because of my fat legs!” Then another would pipe in with, “Well at least your arms aren’t fat like mine!” It was like the battle of the bulge on which body part should be put down more. Each person putting down a part of her body to make the other feel better. I don’t share this to shame them. They did nothing wrong. I share this because it’s an example of a common way of thinking and relating to one’s body that can be helpful to notice. Helpful to change. I’d think, “Oh…hmmm…if her legs are fat, mine must be really fat.” Etc.

Fast forward 30 years or so. I’m feeling suuuper crappy about myself. Struggling. I decided to get a hair cut to get that feeling you get after a great haircut. You know that feeling. Post haircut that wasn’t the feeling that occurred LOL. It was a horrible cut. I looked in the rear view mirror, laughed a little, as I cried, and thought, “well that didn’t work”. My thinking was rock solid in the body hating zone. I would make jokes and put myself down both in my head and actually out loud.

We had a few couples over. I said something like, “well not with my fat ass” during a conversation. One of the guys pulled me aside. He actually told me to stop talking about myself that way. Then talked through how it wouldn’t help to put myself down like that. He said to stop it. I was surprised and thought he was being a bit extra. Later, I was grateful he did that. He didn’t do it from a place of any sort of come on or putting me down, rather from a place of trying to help. During this time, I decided to focus more on being nicer to myself at least toward my body. In my thoughts and the words that came out in front of others.

Self-Love Techniques:

1. Focus on things you like. This was tricky when I tried it. I gained weight and I really did hate myself during this time. The only thing I could find to like about my body when I first started as “I like the color of my eyes”. Literally. That was all I could really believe. (I hope you don’t related to this, but if you do, please consider trying these exercises.) So I used what I could believe. I told myself “Your eye color is pretty”.
2. Question yourself. Would I say that to someone I loved? If the answer was no, I took the time to at least neutralize the thought. “I’m disgusting” might turn into, “I like my eye color” or “I’m not disgusting”. **Keep in mind this is when I was just starting out. I couldn’t always jump to something super positive to help myself because I was struggling at the time. Now, it’s a different story.
3. Compliment others. The idea is to find at least one thing you like about people you see and think it in your head. When I put this into action, if I was at the grocery store or out with friends, I might think, I really love her shoes. Wow, that person has beautiful skin. Oh, I love how that outfit is put together. I would do this about anyone I saw. Why? Focus. It changed the focus outwardly which eventually reflected inwardly.
4. Reverse love song lyrics toward yourself. One idea I play with now (out of many others) is to think of love songs as if I am singing them to myself. Here are a few to consider. This technique takes me out of my typical thinking and is a bit amusing because I find myself enjoying making the words fit as if they were meant to be to me, from me. Let’s talk through a couple.
   • Lady by the Commodores “Lady you bring me up when I’m down!… You’ve gone and changed my life around!” This is perfect to remind you to love yourself and that we do have the power to bring ourselves back around when we face challenges. Also, when Lionel says, “now I see my life has begun”, “you gave me hope and inspiration like only true love can” it makes me remember that loving myself is the only way I can truly be fully here for anyone else.
   • Loving You by Minnie Riperton “Loving you is easy because you’re beautiful” makes it easy to see why I would pull the Minnie Riperton song. If you don’t know this song the whole “making love” part might be hard to ignore if you’re trying to think of this being sung from you to you LOL. If you can, just ignore that part because the reset of lyrics work so well with our game!
   • Almost any Bryan McKnight song will do for this game except the ones about cryin’ J For fun, let’s just use The Only One for Me. “going to be all that I can be”…yes yes to that!
   • The Chainsmokers Don’t let Me Down feat Daya This one might come in handy when you’re not in the best of moods and to remind yourself to help yourself. If you’re super sensitive to words, maybe find one that doesn’t have the theme of “being” let down. For me this one was more empowering about helping myself during a pretty wonky time in life (#secondaffair #girlpretendedtobeaman #stalker – moving out time).
   • Here are two that are easy ones! Perfect by Johnny Gill FEAT: Ralph Tresvant and of Pink F’in Perfect. Both have their plusses and work really well. I would say if you have to start with only one, start with Perfect by Johnny Gill.
   • There are so many other songs we could add, including other genres. Add on you think works in the comments!
5. Affirmations – You can read more about this technique on this post.