CA083: Self-love rituals

Love yourself if you want to be a happy, fulfilled, confident, effective person, able to give and receive love, have self-esteem and a good sense of your self-worth.

But it’s one thing to understand this intellectually and quite another to really know and believe it. One of the best ways to accelerate a self-love habit is through using self-love rituals. Practicing self-love rituals is an easy enjoyable way to implant and build your self-love habit and behaviour until it becomes natural. Today we look at 11 self-love rituals to get you started, but first what’s so special about rituals?

What are rituals and why are they so powerful?

A ritual involves a series of actions, sometimes in a prescribed order – which are a type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone – in this case you!

Because that’s what we’re after isn’t it – a way of behaving you do regularly and invariably, habitually and consistently. 

That’s why developing rituals is powerful, because rather than leaving it to randomness and chance or how we’re feeling on a particular day, by creating rituals we build them into our life and are more likely to do them. Once you’ve created the ritual you don’t have to think about it – it’s part of a system. It’s internalised.

Rituals will supercharge your habits and are better than habits in some ways. You can encompass more than one habit within a ritual and because rituals focus on specific ways of doing something, they are very focused.

Apart from building the habit, the other great thing about using rituals is that by following a set way of doing something you’re creating space and time in your life for it.  Just doing these rituals will send your brain the message that this is important to you – you matter.

These rituals we’re talking about of themselves nothing out of the ordinary. You might think that’s not a ritual that’s just how I’m spending my evening. Great if that’s the case – but by virtue of thinking of it as a ritual and labelling it as a ritual – it makes it a thing. It raises it up out of the everyday and mundane and it becomes something more.  It becomes that thing that you do, and what’s more you’re doing it with intention.

‘You’ time

Most of these self-love rituals fall into the category of how to spend ‘you’ time.  This is time you put aside where you focus on yourself. Scheduling ‘you’ time is one of the key self-love habits. These rituals are a great way to help you do this. How you interpret them and make them your own will depend on your lifestyle, situation and preferences, but we’ve included a few suggestions to give you the idea.

11 Self-love rituals

1. Relaxing or pamper time

• Spa
• Proper moisturise and self massage
• Brush your skin
• Take a long bath or shower

2. Nurture / nourish time

• Self-development
• Visit a museum
• Watch a documentary,

3. Joy time

This will mean many different things to different people. It doesn’t really matter what it is – what matters is that you make a ritual and habit of scheduling time to do something that gives or brings you joy.

• Something just on your own or with others.
• Volunteering
• Get in the zone writing a novel or book
• A hobby like painting, sketching, or a sport
• Even better if it’s something you’re good at so you’re building your self-esteem at the same time.
• Go for a walk in the country or around the city
• Go to see a great film, show or play

Schedule it to make it a ritual. It doesn’t have to be the same thing every day or for the same amount of time every day.

Make a ritual of asking yourself – what am I doing today that it going to bring me joy.

4. Laugh time

• Read a funny book or cartoon
• Watch comedy TV program or film
• Go to a comedy club
• Listen to a funny podcast

The power of laughter is immense. 

You’re telling yourself you deserve to laugh – you deserve to be happy.  Sometimes when we’re stressed or not feeling very loving towards ourselves we almost don’t feel right doing lots of laughing and having fun – especially if others are suffering – but we all deserve to be happy and making laughter a goal for your day or a ritual will help nudge it up the list and keep it on your radar.

5. Gratitude time – for yourself

Of course at BrilliantLivingHQ.com we’re big on gratitude and appreciation of what’s going on in our lives. It’s one of the most efficient and pleasing ways to ground us in our present, but more often than not it’s about other people and things around us.  The difference with this self-love appreciation ritual is it’s about self-appreciation. 

• If you already practice appreciation each day e.g. you write a list every day keep going but ensure at least one item out of your three or however many you do is just about you.
• Or create a separate note of 1 to 5 things you appreciate about yourself today.  It can be something you’ve done – maybe something you did well today, something nice someone said to you – a compliment or feedback – or something you appreciate about yourself.
• For example – your body might not look exactly the way you’d like it to look in every aspect, but it sure does an amazing job of keeping you alive. There are hundreds and thousands of things to appreciate about it – so you will never be stuck again for something to appreciate about yourself.

It’s not always easy, we tend to feel a bit funny about writing down what we like about ourselves. It goes back to the old idea some of us were brought up with that there’s something unseemly about blowing your own trumpet or fishing for compliments. But this ritual will help you counteract those unhelpful beliefs.

And gratitude and appreciation stop you taking things for granted, like how amazing your body and you really are.

6. Coffee, tea or smoothie break

• Take a break – on your own or with a friend, colleague, partner or family
• Make the conscious decision to take ten (or longer) 

7. Meditation

• Being mindful is one of the best ways of loving ourselves.
• Practice living in the here and now – not worrying about the future or ruminating on the past – but being present with your thoughts.
• Spend a few minutes in mindfulness meditation.
• Focus on your breathing and observe the thoughts as they come up and let them go.
• Don’t judge your thoughts but just be with them and let them go.

8. Affirmations

Affirmations are one of our favourite rituals.

• Affirmations are positive statements that affirm (or make firm) the behaviours and ways of thinking and being that help us be the person we want to be and achieve how we want to be.
• You can use affirmations for anything but they are by their very nature a great self-love ritual because they have all the essential elements of a great self-love ritual.
• They are repeatable – indeed their efficacy relies on repetition – it’s the constant repetition that helps to counteract previous thoughts and beliefs and starts to build and reinforce the positive affirming statements that you want to make into your new way of thinking.
• They are very personal – they relate to you and your thoughts.
• Some people might say that by using affirmations you’re reinforcing what you don’t like about yourself – but it’s the opposite. You’re accepting that this is how things are now and opening the door to creating new thought patterns and beliefs that will serve you well – this is a loving thing to do for yourself.
• This is putting yourself first so you can become more effective at something or happier or more fulfilled in some way – which will have a positive effect on others but it is primarily about you and how you feel.
• We start off our Brilliant Living™ affirmations and suggest you do it too with with the words ‘I fully love and accept myself’. This is an immensely powerful statement of self-love.

If you want to be more loving towards yourself, start with our Brilliant Living™ affirmations for love.  Treat yourself (they’re very reasonable) to bring more love into your life, including love for yourself.

9. Food self-love rituals

• Be intentional with a meal and make it into a ritual – so you’re intentionally feeding yourself health-giving food
• Instead of rushing to get something on table, take your time to do something special or different (maybe bake a cake). Put some nice music on and accept it’s going to take you an hour and that you’re going to enjoy the experience.

10. Pet time

• Walk, cuddle, play with or groom your dog or cat or talk to your budgerigar

You might not get this if you don’t have a pet – but if you do have one you’ll know what we mean!

11. Say ‘I love you’

• Tell yourself ‘I love you’ everyday
• Look in the mirror and say it out loud
• It’s like an affirmation but is worth stating separately.
• Say it first thing in the morning or last thing at night or both. 

That’s enough to be going on with for now.  We would love to hear your suggestions which you can leave in our Facebook group or on our Facebook page.

We’re not suggesting you do them all every day (but how great would that make your day!) But make some ‘you’ time that is non-negotiable. Decide what’s going to be in that ‘you’ time, and it might include 1, 2, or 3 of these self-love rituals.

Have a lovely time this week being purposeful about it. That’s the secret to all of this - remembering to do it and bringing it to your awareness on a daily basis so it becomes a ritual and then a habit.

Episode 83 of the Changeability Podcast

Listen to episode 83 of the Changeability Podcast to hear us talk about all of this and more.

Links mentioned in the show:

• Episode 82 -10 ways to build the self-love habit
• Six reasons to love yourself
• Episode 81 - Self-love
• Join our free Changeability Facebook Group
• Like our Brilliant Living Facebook Page
• BrilliantLivingHQ.com/affirmations-products to find our affirmations including your love affirmations