Not too long ago, self­less­ness was ap­plaud­ed as a most ad­mirable trait. These days, women are trad­ing in the give-my-all-to-oth­ers-and-leave-my­self-un­done be­hav­iours for a jour­ney to self love. And we aren’t turn­ing back.

It’s not self­ish to put your­self first. Fill­ing your own cup puts you in a bet­ter po­si­tion to up­lift those around you. But be­yond that, falling in love with your­self is a path that leads to liv­ing a high qual­i­ty life.

Sev­er­al de­f­i­n­i­tions of self love ex­ist but the one I con­nect with the most is this: Self Love is a state of ap­pre­ci­a­tion for one­self that grows from ac­tions that sup­port our phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al growth. If you’re un­sure how to be­gin, here are some ways to prac­tise self love.

Stop Com­par­ing your­self

Con­stant­ly com­par­ing your­self to oth­ers fo­cus­es your at­ten­tion on what you DON’T have rather than on your bless­ings. It’s hard to ap­pre­ci­ate your­self when you’re fo­cused on the voids in your life. So­cial Me­dia has not made this eas­i­er as we’ve start­ed com­par­ing our re­al lives to the on­line lives of our “friends”. We of­ten for­get that apps like In­sta­gram are a col­lec­tion of peo­ple’s best mo­ments. So com­par­ing the good and bad of our own lives to the cu­rat­ed high points of our friends’ is a recipe for un­hap­pi­ness. But whether on or of­fline, com­par­i­son has al­ways been the thief of joy. Drop the com­par­isons and start prac­tis­ing grat­i­tude.

2. Set per­son­al bound­aries

It’s im­por­tant to set ap­pro­pri­ate, healthy bound­aries for work, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, time and space. The bound­aries you set for your­self pre­vent you from tak­ing on too much to the detri­ment of your health while the bound­aries you com­mu­ni­cate to oth­ers re­duces the po­ten­tial for un­healthy in­ter­ac­tions with them. One per­son­al bound­ary I have set is re­fus­ing to take work home.

3. In­vest in self care and your phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance

Any­thing that re­lax­es you can aid your self care- a trip to the sa­lon, an ap­point­ment for a mani/pe­di or my per­son­al favourite, a bot­tle of wine cou­pled with my favourite movie. When you spend time en­gaged in re­lax­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, your stress lev­els are re­duced and those feel good hor­mones are pro­duced.

Be­sides the pam­per­ing, it’s al­so im­por­tant to dress well. I can’t ex­plain how, but a boost of con­fi­dence comes every time I dress im­pres­sive­ly! And you know what? How well you groom your­self ac­tu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cates to oth­ers how you feel about you.

4. In­vest in your phys­i­cal health and well­be­ing

Self love isn’t sim­ply about do­ing what makes you feel good in the mo­ment. It’s al­so putting in work that is dif­fi­cult and dis­liked but ben­e­fi­cial. Mind­ing my di­et and fit­ness has been the per­fect ex­am­ple of this. It wasn’t easy cut­ting out sug­ar and I com­plained dur­ing every work­out but I def­i­nite­ly loved my gym body more than the roti-lover bel­ly I cur­rent­ly sport.

5. Prac­tice pos­i­tive self af­fir­ma­tion

Pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions are per­son­al state­ments re­peat­ed to over­come neg­a­tive thoughts. This prac­tice rewires the mind in­to a pos­i­tive state as you start be­liev­ing the af­firm­ing words. Even more pow­er­ful than sim­ply re­peat­ing these mantras is us­ing them to shut down the neg­a­tiv­i­ty spewed to­wards you by oth­ers.

6. Spend time in prayer, med­i­ta­tion and re­flec­tion.

Whether you be­lieve in God, the uni­verse or en­er­gy forces, it’s es­sen­tial to tend to your spir­i­tu­al health. Prayer cre­ates hope­ful­ness, med­i­ta­tion brings clar­i­ty and re­flec­tion fos­ters mind­ful­ness. Each of these ac­tiv­i­ties al­lows us to view our life’s jour­ney in a pos­i­tive man­ner and leads us to find pur­pose in this world.

A re­search pro­fes­sion­al by day and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment blog­ger by night, Daniel­la be­lieves in­di­vid­ual growth is a con­tin­u­ous process that re­quires ac­tive re­flec­tion & work. Em­brac­ing your life-sto­ry is just the be­gin­ning. Her blog, The Bet­ter Self Project, shares in­spi­ra­tion and ad­vice re­al­ized from my own jour­ney of self im­prove­ment. Con­nect with her on FB: The Bet­ter Self Project and IG: @the­bet­ter­self­pro­ject868