Art is a practice, medicine is a practice, and architecture is a practice. Photography, painting, meditation, dance, writing, and yoga is a practice.
What makes these particular things a practice?
A practice is something that has an intrinsic (internal) motivation to achieve excellence both for oneself and for the good of the community. It brings to mind such values as compassion, beauty, healing and enrichment for everyone, not only the practitioner.
Self-love is a practice. As practitioners, we journey along a path that eventually leads to mastery. There is always more to learn. Sometimes we stumble on the path, and sometimes we veer off it altogether.
Even a master practitioner continues to improve her craft. By becoming skilled and dedicated disciples of self-love, we inspire and enable others to realise those qualities in themselves.
How is your self-love practice?
How much time do you devote each day to taking great care of yourself, creating self talk that is positive and empowering, and fostering an attitude of acceptance of your strengths and weaknesses?
This is not just for you, it is for all of us. As we encounter women who are overflowing with love and confidence we are given an antidote to the messages of the media and magazines who tell us we are not skinny/pretty/successful enough.
My practice can be at a different level and involve different priorities to yours, and still be part of a body of work, a community of wisdom. New ideas, experimentation and trial and error are as valid as traditional age-old practices. We collaborate to find new truths.
What are you practicing today? Where are you putting your energy?
Let’s practice self-love and collaborate together to uncover excellence in our lives that we would never find alone.
How do you nurture yourself? How do you practice self-love?
This post is part of #1000Speak for Compassion movement for 20th April, 2015. Please add your own compassion post to the link below, and read and share others.
FRIST!
I…er…try to eat healthily most of the time, and I make sure I keep up with sports and socialisation and…BLOGGING. Being part of the Blogosphere is VERY self-nurture-y 🙂
(YAY! I wasn’t sure I could answer that one, but I did 😀 )
Blogging is very self-nurture-y. 🙂
Yep. Community, innit. LOVE IT.
I LOVE the blogging community. LOVE IT.
Me very too 😀
I’ve never thought about self love as a practice, but yes, you’re right. It’s something I’m trying to incorporate into my life and when I do remember to do it I see its benefits in all areas.
Thanks, Jen. I agree that how we feel about ourselves spills over into our interactions with other people.
I do struggle with self love and self care but you are right it is a practice and we need to remember that its practice not perfection we seek.
I read somewhere today that there are three kinds of goals – outcome, performance and process. Self-love is definitely a process goal.
Hmmm! Art and writing are definitely a practice. Self love? I never thought about that in such a way. I practice art and writing as a practice for self love – since I need those things to feel worth (as lame as that sounds) . I also just took up going to the gym, since I’m unhappy with my weight and need a stress outlet.
These are things I do mostly for myself to keep my own sanity.
Creativity does seem to help with our level of self-love. I suspect it has something to do with allowing our true selves to shine through.
Katie, you and I were thinking along the same lines with our posts. Yours is beautifully written and uplifting.
Thank you, Val.
I practice self-love with Hooponopono an ancient Hawaiian technique of self love, responsibility and forgiveness.
That’s a great practice, Kelly.
This is a great way to reframe self-love. It seems so indulgent and self-centered at first glance, but it really isn’t. I realize that when I hear other women judge my body. I am no longer hurt by it, because I realize they judge me because they judge themselves and in that way of seeing the world and human bodies, no one wins. We can all be examples of self-love. Beautiful post as always.
You’re right about letting go of the judgement of others. Thank you for your insight. x
What a lovely post. Practicing self compassion is the first step to becoming a compassionate person. If we can’t be compassionate to ourselves…how can we help others??!
Beautifully said!
Self love is the most important love. Unless we love ourselves and look after ourselves, we will not be happy and certainly will not feel energetic. I nourish my body by exercising daily and eating home-cooked, nutritious food. I also nourish my soul by practicing meditation and staying away from negativity.
You make me believe that Self love is a practice! Wonderful post.
This reminds me of what I wrote about back in February for #1000Speak. And unfortunately, self-love is a good habit we can fall out of so quickly. Some days it’s easier to nurture yourself than it is on others. (I’m in a bit of a downswing at the moment.) That said, I have a gratitude journal I write in every night, as well as an affirmation box that I pull a quote from every morning and repeat several times to myself. And meditation, too, though I have trouble fitting it in on a daily basis. But I’m working on it. 🙂
Btw, thank you for writing this article, Katie. It’s always good to see another article out there that emphasizes the need for us to practice self-love. 🙂
You can always sense the self nurturers, can’t you? They are the ones who genuinely encourage and promote others. They draw people to them in a positive, healthy way.
I adore this line in your post: “As we encounter women who are overflowing with love and confidence we are given an antidote to the messages of the media and magazines who tell us we are not skinny/pretty/successful enough.”
Yes!
As for how I am practicing self-love today? I am setting and trying to maintain boundaries so I have some space and time for me. And tonight? I’ll be reading through #1000Speak posts for motivation :).
i’m practicing that slowly.. hope i can do it forever.. i always feel like needing a hug from someone..
I love that there are so many articles on self-compassion! You’re right that this is an antidote for all the negative images thrown out by the media!!
Thanks lovely Roshni x
One thing I do to practice self-love is I sleep every day by 10pm and wake up by 8am. When i hear people talking about humans having an evil nature I think that is wrong. But our nature is people who need sleep and food and all that, and to the degree to which you waiver from these essentials is to the degree to which you become “thoughtless” or.. I don’t like to call it evil. I like Hannah Arendts definition that there’s so such thing as evil, only thoughtlessness. But people do this all the time, and they can pushed so far. Think of school. Is it really good to force people into school? What if someone says I want the exact amount of school that is good for my brain. Then someone else says “well you gotta do all this or you won’t become a doctor”, and their willing to disobey their nature (which is good) in order to .. well basically in order to become evil, because to the degree to which you accept thoughtlessness into your life. But there’s just so many ways this happens, and people keep pushing and pushing, but all your natures are good. Have you ever noticed days when you’re more tired because of overworking or something you’re less likely to react to seeing a kid who’s about to run onto a street? Your reaction time is slower, or you may just say “ahh well someone else should help him” or something along those lines. This is what the word thoughtlessness is referring to. That type of behaviour. So to any degree which you push yourself away from your nature (which is very very good. people are extremely good) you will be making yourself more thoughtless, which Hannah Arendt said “there’s no such thing as evil, only thoughtlessness”, so you get the picture. These things are crucial.
Bye