“Know thyself. Accept thyself. Love thyself. No matter what you have done, where you have been, know, accept, and love who you are.” – Iyanla Vanzant

In this day and age of social media and digital content, most people tend to follow what the influencers are doing. Everyone wants to be skinny, fair, have long hair, a great physique, just because it gets attention.

However, there are a lot of different aspects of social media that no one has ever tried to understand, even if they have, people tend to ignore it because it’s not what they see on social media.

Big influencers have a lot of issues going on in their life which they don’t showcase on social media. Along with that, they use editing apps to edit their photos, waist, hips, and even skin color which shows the lack of self-acceptance.

If you’re constantly comparing yourself with these influencers and trying to become like them and feel hard to love yourself, this blog post is for you.

If you feel like you have to become like these influencers or anyone else that has a lot of influence in the world, you are not accepting and loving yourself. There are a lot of great ways through which you can love yourself first and stop seeking validation from others, in real life or social media:

1. Accept & embrace your Flaws and love yourself for who you are- Everyone has their own flaws and imperfections (even the influencers). For you to love yourself, you need to accept that your flaws make you who you are and it’s okay to be yourself., and with it, love yourself.
2. Find ways to spend time with yourself- Stop scrolling mindlessly over social media and find more time for and with yourself. Indulge in activities that you used to do before or find new ones to feel good about yourself and hence, love yourself.It could be as simple as getting dressed with a great hairstyle and makeup for your work-from-home job. It will make you feel good and confident about who you are.
3. Stop Judging and Forcing yourself, instead love yourself- When everyone’s life is going great, they post it on social media and tell everyone about it. However, when something tragic happens, no one talks about the issue at hand. Similarly, don’t force yourself to feel good about everything in life. When you’re faced with a negative situation, give yourself some time to cope with it and feel your emotions. Giving yourself enough time would eventually help you to think clearly. You’ll feel more equipped to start taking care of yourself, resulting in you working on a path to love yourself.
4. Journaling & expressing Gratitude- Journaling is conscious writing, about your day, life, a particular situation, or anything else. Journaling is a great way to express your feelings on paper and become more aware of how and what you feel. Have a notepad/journal, start off by writing down how your day went, and gradually move to talk about your feelings and emotions. While you’re on that, express gratitude to the simplest of things in life. It could be as big or as small. This process helps you in knowing yourself better, and discovering all the wonderful things you do, and the ones that you have. When you start to realise this, it becomes easier to love yourself too.
5. Physical Movements- If you have body image issues and are struggling to accept and love yourself, simply start by working out. Get some yoga done during the day or hit the gym if it fancies you. Once you feel good about your body, you’ll automatically feel great about yourself.
6. Mental Health and Stress- If you have been dealing with mental health issues and haven’t been to therapy, find a great therapist who can help you with figuring out your mental health. However, if you’re dealing with stress, find stress-busting activities like a date out with friends and family, taking some time off social media, and work. Hanging out with friends, or working towards making your health better gives you a higher sense of yourself, making it easier to love yourself.
7. Negative Self-Talk- It’s okay to say bad things about yourself once in a while, however, if done for prolonged periods, it will become a default setting in your brain and you might end up thinking about yourself negatively all the time. The key to changing negative self-talk to positive self-talk is to become aware that you talk negatively about yourself.Once you have conquered that, you may move forward to actually changing these negative thoughts to positive ones by simply taking a pause whenever the negative thoughts occur.

Having a positive mindset always works wonders when you’re on the journey to love yourself.

Accepting and loving yourself seems hard and might even seem overwhelming at first, however, it isn’t impossible. Start taking baby steps and learn about yourself while you’re on the self-love and self-acceptance journey.