Self-Love 365

Today's FUN way of infusing self-love into our daily lives is through what we choose to read. Reading for self-love can be either: Reading something you love to read (notice + name it as part of your self-love practice) or reading something you consider to be about self-love. In this episode, Lee Lee shares 3 of her favorite self-love books, Out of Love: Finding Your Way Back to Self-Compassion by Marianne Ingheim; Hunger by Roxanne Gay; and House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. If you're looking for new books about self-love, look them u!p And make a plan to read them, either by ordering them from a bookstore (buy black-owned!!) or from the library, and/or by adding to your nightstand shelf.

Every now and then, life gets hectic and we plan a vacation. Or maybe we plan one in advance because we know life's going to be hectic for a while and we'll need a break afterward. A vacation acts as a regeneration of the relationship with whatever it is we're focusing on for that time period, whether family, our spirit of adventure, or our need for downtime. Good news: we can follow the same process when we need to reconnect with ourselves. We can research, plan, and anticipate a Self-Love vacation (or staycation) anytime we want, provided it fits into our budget and lifestyle. Take a moment today to dream about what this would look like and how great it would feel--to spend time just connecting with yourself. It can be a day, an hour, an afternoon, a weekend, or a whole week. The scope & specifics is up to you! Dream about but don't stop there: go ahead and schedule something in so that you can look forward to it the same way you do a "regular" vacation.

There's nothing more important in a healthy self-love practice than regular intimacy with ourselves. Just as you would establish and foster a time & place for intimacy in a loving relationship with another person, you can also foster intimacy with yourself. This is both a physical act (acquiring tools and storing them lovingly) and a mindset shift; namely, replacing shame & secrecy around self-touch with specialness, joy, and curiosity. Do a bedside table (or drawer/shelf) makeover... What does your bedside table say about your desire for intimacy? Is it full of dirty tissues & old chapsticks you no longer use...? Or is it clean, neat, organized, attractive, and filled with the things that foster rest & pleasure? If not the latter, ask yourself why that is the case. Do the mental work first, and then setting up the physical space will become more ease-full. Alternatively, go ahead and set up your physical space to support self-intimacy and then, in the appreciation and, frankly, in the convenience, your mindset will shift over time. The secret is out: most adults pleasure themselves on a regular basis. Let's stop hiding it, and showcase our toolkit--or, at the very least--honor it and place it appropriately & lovingly nearby the place where this intimacy happens.

Today's way of infusing self-love into our lives is by infusing self-love into our homes. Use a critical lens to search around your home and find things you DON'T love (or don't love to use) and... Get Rid of Them!! You can choose to hire a professional and go through KonMari or some other organizing strategy with moral support, but you don't have to. You can also just investigate your home on your own. The criteria for keeping things is that you love looking at it, it makes you feel loving, or you love using it. Otherwise, it's not contributing to the feelings you want to have and it's not supportive of your overall Self-Love practice. I recommend starting with the one place in your home that you DO absolutely love. Make a list of everything about it: describe it in detail, including its size & shape, its location in the home, what's on it (if it's furniture) or in it (if it's a room). Be specific and get all of the details on paper because this list is going to help you determine what to change about other spaces in your home you don't love to this degree.

You know what's fun? Eating what you love. Importantly, if we are practicing self-love--yes, even in our eating habits--then we don't just get to eat what we love; we get to eat what we love and NOT feel guilty about it. Yes, please! The practice of giving yourself a "self-love feast" at every meal begins, like many other areas we've talked about, with noticing. What do you feel like eating? What sounds good in the moment? What is available and/or easy to prepare? Listen to your body and give it the food it's asking for. Next, pause before you actually eat and notice the plate: how it looks, what it makes you feel, how pretty or colorful or aromatic it is... Then, EAT IT (obvi). And then, pay attention once again. How do you feel after eating? Does lethargy hit you an hour after this meal? Maybe you consider having it at another time of day when you crave it again in the future. Do you have so much energy you're bouncing off the walls? Maybe that's a better meal for breakfast than it is for dinner! Listen, here's the thing the media and diet culture doesn't want you to know: YOU are the expert on YOU. You know what tastes good, and you know how different foods make you feel. You simply have to stay aware and stay flexible. There's no wrong way or right way to eat, unless you're eating with guilt. That's no bueno. We can't have a Self-Love Feast with a side of guilt. So, say good-bye to shame & secrecy, and invite in communication & self-talk instead. Listen. Pay Attention. Eat Well.

This week is all about the F-U-N of being in love with yourself. We start off with our wardrobe. A healthy self-love practice means we only wear what we love to wear. Style trends be damned. Love wearing stripes? Wear them! A fan of polka-dots? Buy clothes with polka-dots! The rules are simple: if you love wearing it & if you love the way wearing it makes you feel, it stays. And if you don't, let it go. Pass it along to someone else who will love wearing it. Once you've pared down your wardrobe to only things you love, it will be much easier to abide by this rule when shopping. However, remember to also check in with your values & your budget. Staying within budget and supporting the types of stores you want to see thrive will mean your love for the items you buy will thrive only that much more! Get started with this practice today by throwing ONE thing out that you don't love to wear. Wouldn't it feel great to never see that item staring at you again???

The final day of our Self-Love Reset! In this episode, I tell you about my 3-question "test" that I can hold any action up against to determine if it's Self-Love or not. This tool can be used throughout your Self-Love practice, whether as an official part of a reset (like we're doing here) or any time you're feeling unsure. The three questions are: Is it true? Is it loving? Is it me? In other words, for an action to be part of your Self-Love practice, it must be honest, loving, and authentic. That's it! If you can say yes to those three questions, then it counts as Self-Love! Try it out and see what you think...

Day 6 of our Self-Love Reset is all about assessing our current self-care practices. (Remember: Self-Care is the acting out of our desire for & feelings of Self-Love.) Take a look at your current schedule and how busy or free you are, and then compare that to your current self-care habits. Do they balance out? Do they mesh well together? Do you need or have time for more self-care, or do you need to shift some of your practices into different iterations. If you're feeling short on hours & time, maybe a daily bath routine becomes a spa morning every other week. If you have more time in your day, perhaps you start a creative project that feels good. You don't have to completely get rid of habits that mean a lot to you, but you may have to shift them--make them shorter or longer, depending on where you're at in your daily life. Aim to adjust, not to obliterate! And by all means, this should be a restorative exercise that brings you more EASE. If you're getting stressed out just by doing this exercise--time to elevate the self-care!!

Sometimes, we get stuck in our hopes & dreams for a beautiful, inspiration, compassion Self-Love practice and we forget that love is actually all around us. We don't have to make it "hard" because we've built a life that consists of myriad outlets that provide us with love. When we feel depleted, overwhelmed, are anxious about something in particular--or we just don't feel that great--that's the time to stop planning, dreaming, and doing, and just start noticing where love already exists. Perhaps you have some books that remind you how to love yourself. Revisit them and pull out your favorite quotes. Maybe you have a playlist that makes you feel loved: listen to it. Take a drive around your neighborhood & look for symbols of love--a couple walking hand-in-hand; cutout hearts in windows; trees & any form of nature, really... All of these (and more!) speak of love and are there for the visual taking-in, if only we start to pay attention. Self-Love doesn't have to be hard! Take the easy way out for today, and just notice the LOVE that's already present in your life.

We move forward in our "Self-Love Reset" to, in a way, a second-guessing of our own preconceived notions about self-love and its healthy habits. Yesterday, we wrote a definition of Self-Love and today we're deconstructing that definition. Importantly, deconstruction is not about tearing something down--about Destructing it--but about investigation. Approach the task of deconstruction with a willingness to think differently about the topic, and a willingness to look at all sides of an issue. As you deconstruct your own definition of Self-Love, you can look at the different parts of it and see how they hold up next to each other; you can assess it as a whole and try to "poke holes" in your own ideas; or you can investigate the actions that go along with the definition--how well are you performing those actions? how often? how balanced? how aligned? This isn't just an exercise to have an exercise! Deconstruction allows us to challenge assumptions to ensure we are loving ourselves with authenticity, clarity, and compassion.