What is self-care and self-love ?

If you were like me you probably thought you knew what the difference is between self-love and self-care because I’m being completely honest I thought I knew what the difference was to. In all honesty I thought self – love and self-care were the same thing which I know a lot of other people think too.

Through this time of uncertainty I think we all need to show ourselves a bit more gratitude, love and appreciation.

How did I learn the difference?

A little while ago, I generally go for a dog walk every single day which can last between 30 – 50 mins. I would normally listen to music to when I go out but I started to get bored of it and thought what else could I be listening too which could actually help me and get me set up for the day.

It was only a few weeks ago I think my social media coach Ellie said that she had started to listen to podcasts, which originally I thought there won’t be any out there I would be interested in listening too but I was completely wrong. I started to listen to a podcast called ‘manifestation babe’ which I absolutely love now, she had a guest on her podcast called Paul fisherman and this is were this blog post came from so let’s get into it.

What is self-love ?

I thought I knew what self-love was and I actually thought I was doing it all of the time, but when I listened to this podcast I realised that I wasn’t and it made me want to research it more and learn more about self-care and self-love and relate it to life more.

Self-love is where an individual learns to love themselves and focuses on the individuals well-being and the happiness of the individual. If we don’t learn to love ourselves we end up looking at all of our flaws and imperfections and comparing ourselves to others.

What is self – care ?

I think a lot of us get self-love and self-care completely mixed up and some of us don’t even realise that there is a difference between them. I didn’t even know that there was a difference if I’m being entirely honest there’s a lot about things that we don’t realise already until be look into it more.

Self-care relates to the way we look after ourselves in relation to our physical,mental and spiritual health. Looking after ourselves is always overlooked as not essential but actually if we don’t dedicate a bit of time to ourselves we end running out of fuel and becoming exhausted.

Do you take care of yourself ?

Take a second to think of the answer to this question.

Because you will straightaway say yes I do look after myself but if you question yourself deeper enough you will proper realise that you don’t actually. I’m going to be completely honest with you when I say this because I didn’t use to take that good care of myself because I guess when life is chaotic you just forget or you’ve got look after someone else. I definitely look after myself more now and take more time out of my day to think of myself btw this is not selfish this is called looking after yourself.

I use to think looking after yourself was doing things like taking a bubble bath, getting your hair or nails done etc but actually this is a bit of both because it’s looking after yourself physically but not necessarily mentally. The examples I gave are examples of self-care because it’s ways how we look after yourself.

Ways to actually take care of yourself

I thought I would give you a few examples of how you can take care of yourself using some of the self-care and self- love strategies as I think we all need take better care of ourselves and show ourselves more love and show our bodies that we are grateful for them.

Here are few ways you can take care of yourself –

• Practice gratitude – Start practising by writing down or typing 5 things that you are grateful for every day. This will help you to start to appreciate yourself and show yourself gratitude.
• Go for a walk – Go and get a walk and get a bit of fresh air. I think especially at the moment going for a walk will help you get away from every day life and just let you be able to clear your mind.
• Have a social media detox – Try putting your phone or other technology down and try and have a phone and social media detox for an hour or how ever you feel comfortable with. This week I managed to take a whole day off from my social media just to give myself a proper break and let myself do other things that don’t reason enough around social media.
• Try journaling – One thing that I’m trying to learn to do is journaling to try and give myself time and reflex on the day or week. It is also a great way to write down how you are feeling and let all of your feelings out.
• Make sure you drink water – Over the past year or so I make sure I drink at least 2 litres of water everyday and I use to absolutely hate drinking water but now I don’t mind it. One thing I have noticed since drinking more water is that my skin is a lot better and I’m less bloated I know that’s totally off subject there 😬

These are just a few of the things that I do to try and look after myself. I hope some of these ideas will give you a few suggestions on how you can try and take care of yourself.

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Until next time 😊