Self-love is a phrase that comes up often in conversations about growth and healing. But the more I sit with it, the more I find myself questioning it. What does it really mean to love ourselves? Curious if anyone else has thought about this. What does self-love mean to you? ❤️🙏

Let me tell you a story. I used to be a yes man. I used to be someone that would never decline anything that people wanted me to do. Because of that I undeniably made less results in my healing trauma journey and all of that but it was very difficult for me to learn how to say no. It's not an easy thing to do and I just want to say if you relate then read on because I'll tell you exactly how I overcame this, how I learned to say no. I learned to say no because I just realised something: If you say yes then you will be more like that person but if you're honest do you really want to be that person? Do you want to have a similar lifestyle and look to that person? Most of the time people would say: “No.” So that's one way to begin. The second way is developing courage. Now the thing with courage is that a lot of people think, "Oh that's just not feeling fear at all" but no, it's whenever you feel fear but you do it anyway. That's the whole point of it and that's how you be courageous. Practise this skill. The third thing is just stopping being a perfectionist. Now a lot of times people delay these uncomfortable conversations, like saying no to your parents to go to university or whatever, because they're perfectionists, in their mind they think they have to say the most excellent perfect way to explain this but in reality all they need to do is just blurt it out and just say it and that's it, that's all there is to it, it does not have to be perfect at all. The reason why this applies to mental health is that you will get a lot of opportunities to, I don't know, go to this holiday or whatever but maybe you just want to, I don't know, focus on your studies or your work for a season and you would be happier doing that. Well then this is the skill that you need for those moments when they arise, and there are tons of other excellent uses for it. Thank you for reading. Hope it was valuable.