From our NORM Healthy Manager:
Welcome back to the blog! Ah, Valentine’s Day…some might say it’s just another holiday to spend money and others might say it’s a day to spoil the ones you love. Either way you look at it, it’s definitely a holiday involved around love and lots of sugar.
So the theme of this month’s blog is the, “Love Yourself” challenge. Yes, you heard me correctly…challenge. We often forget to treat ourselves and to put ourselves first. I’m sure a lot of you who are reading this are either parents, a spouse, a grandparent or a hard working individual who constantly devotes your time to work. While all of these things are wonderful and make us who we are, we can’t forget to love ourselves in the process. I am a firm believer that in order to love and help others, you most love and help yourself first.
Now this isn’t going to be a sappy self-love kind of post. I’m sure you read about that all of the time and pretty much anywhere you go. While I do find self-love to be highly important, I believe learning how to love yourself is just as vital.
As a trainer, I constantly heard negative thoughts and interpretations of my client’s own bodies. It is one thing to want to better and change something you might not like, but to talk about yourself as if you aren’t worthy of the process is unacceptable. In fact, I disliked it so much, that I would have my clients take a lap or do something they absolutely dreaded, such as burpees, push ups, wall sits, etc. To me, speaking of oneself so poorly, will only result in a negative outcome.
For the remaining time in February, let’s turn this month of love into a month of loving ourselves. Here are a few things I really want you to try and apply to your everyday routine…
- Affirmation: Every morning you should wake up and say to yourself one thing you like about yourself. Either that or write something motivational on a sticky note and put it on your mirror, where you get ready at. They say plants grow better when you speak kind words to them, can you imagine you much you would grow if you spoke kindly about you?
- Treat your body like a temple. Seriously. Feed it and nourish it with things that it deserves. Your body is too beautiful and precious to be fueling it with the 50% off Valentine’ Day candy at Walgreens.
- Everyday find something that you like about yourself and mean it. Whether it be that you have curly hair or that you have a serving personality, say it…mean it…believe it.
- Find a good book about positive thoughts and loving yourself, read it and and grasp more knowledge about self love.
- Last but not least. No matter how hard, joking or serious…avoid speaking poorly of yourself. Don’t even joke around with it. Give yourself time and room to grow and change that mindset.
This steps aren’t easy, and it’s something that you don’t develop overnight. But once you apply it and keep it apart of your routine, it has the ability to dramatically change your mood and life. I had my clients do these and slowly but surely, their stress levels went down which led into faster weight loss and they appreciated the process more. Take it from me, I know it’s hard and sometimes it feels impossible, but that’s what makes us all beautiful in our own way, none of us are the same.
