As the approaching Valentine's day often pushes us thoughts of love closer to the forefront of our minds, reflecting on the many different forms of love and how they can show up are all important.
We invite to focus on self-love this Valentine’s season and join our 5 Days of Self Love Challenge. Whether you are partnered, unpartnered, in a relationship or not, thinking about love or less focused on it, we all have the opportunity to grow our practice of self-love as a way to grow and propel our joy forward.
In light of the honoring Black History Month, this challenge is open to all, but especially made with Black women and femmes in mind.
5 Days of Self- Love Challenge
Day 1: Pick A Journal Prompt
A part of self-love includes self-knowledge. Knowing yourself well enough to recognize the ways you show up for yourself and the ways you don’t is a component of heightened self-knowledge which can lead to heightened self-love. Pick from the following original hand-crafted journal prompts focused on helping you better know yourself and your tendencies when it comes to self-love. Whether it be a handwritten journal entry, a voice memo, or a bulleted list of your thoughts, take the next 5-10 minutes to put your thoughts into words.
What are the things you seek most from others when it comes to love? Is it honesty? Comfort? Encouragement? Write about the ways that you can provide yourself some of these things you desire from others.
Tap into your self-talk. What are a few things that you often say to yourself? Put them into words and then elaborate on the ones that feel good to hear and oppose the ones that don’t.
Picture yourself as a child. With the love and tenderness you would provide a child, in this journal prompt offer yourself a piece of advice, a reassurance, or maybe even a rule or regulation (with clear explanation, of course) that you know you need to hear.
Day 2: Meditation
As a gift for yourself, take the next 5 minutes to breath and be fully present in one of the following guided meditations:
5-Minute Self-Love Meditation
5-Minute Morning Meditation for Positivity
5-7ish Minute Meditation Gift from a Personal Favorite with an Intro
(start at 2:20 to jump into the meditation)
Day 3: Write Yourself A Love Letter
Find some stillness and take a few deep breaths. If you are having a hard time relaxing or focusing in this process, or if you simply feel moved, take a moment to ground. Move through your body consciously relaxing your body part by part through feeling your feet, your ankles, your legs, your hips, your belly, your shoulders, and release whatever tension it is you might be holding in your jaw, your forehead, or wherever else you may be feeling tightness.
Let your mind wander to a place where you are thinking about the beautiful qualities you have. Write yourself a love letter. What are things you adore about yourself? Even if you are not at a place where you easily can point out things that you like about yourself, start with the things you don’t dislike, be easy on yourself if this task is difficult.
Shower yourself with sweet and dedicated thoughts.
This is a letter you can revisit in moments when you need extra reminding of the love you have for yourself.
Day 4: Work Towards A Goal
Self-compassion is certainly a big part of self-love, but love also consists of other things. One part of self-love includes discipline and ensuring that we do the things we need to in order to accomplish the things that are important for our well-being and for reaching our goals. This could look like recognizing that you are stressed when you leave your work for the second half of the day and spend the first half of it relaxing, so you want to do a better job of prioritizing your tasks. It could look like pushing yourself to finish that job or school application since you are unhappy in your current situation. It can also look like a practice of making your bed every morning because it simply makes you feel like you have a morning ritual that sets your day off to an organized start. In the way that a teacher, parent, or caring adult encourages a little kid to eat healthy foods even though it might not be what they want in the moment, we have to practice discipline in our adult lives.
Take a minute and set yourself space up for success. Tidy your desk, make your bed, close the extra tabs on your laptop, light a candle, fill your water bottle, or engage in any short task that somehow contributes to whatever goal it is you have for yourself in the next couple of hours. As you accomplish this task, be conscious of how through this action you are setting yourself up for whatever goal it is you have in mind.
Day 5: Practice Self-Expression
Self-expression is one way we show love for ourselves. Finding ways to express, release, and advocate for ourselves can be difficult. Art is one of the outlets we have at our disposal to do this. As a gift for yourself and as a way of practicing your power to express yourself, set a timer for at least 5 minutes and either get a pen and paper, some painting supplies if you have them, or some tool you can use to create something artful.
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be Morr well sis.