Mindfulness Workbook for Self-Love: Compassionate Exercises to Cultivate Your Happiness and Well-Being

PART ONE

Learning Self-Love the Mindful Way

The first part of this book focuses on helping you understand the basic concepts behind the mindful self-love journey. This includes developing an understanding of self-love, a brief introduction to mindfulness, and how mindfulness will help foster self-love. The goal is to ensure that you understand how it will increase your motivation and your feelings of self-worth. This is the why part of the book. The second part is the how part, where we get into the specific exercises and practices.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

—OSCAR WILDE

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Self-Love

THIS CHAPTER touches on some of the common barriers that get in the way of expressing and feeling self-love. It also aims to help you understand why expressing self-love is important. Loving yourself has positive effects that will touch every part of your life. At the conclusion of this chapter, you will have an enhanced understanding of the concept of self-love. Hopefully, you will move on to the next chapter feeling more motivated and hopeful that working to express more love for yourself will have notable impacts on your experience of life.

Defining Self-Love

Self-love is not based on outward achievements, it is not conditional on being perfect, and it cannot be fostered through shame or unhealthy criticism. Rather, self-love is an emotional base of love and acceptance that exists throughout the full range of human experience, including all the ups and downs of life’s journey.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of self-love has two key components: (1) an appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue, and (2) proper regard for and attention to one’s own happiness or well-being. It is important to go a bit deeper than the dictionary definition, but this is a good place to start because of the two components it emphasizes: both inward and outward action.

The first path toward self-love begins with an inward appreciation of your own value that is present in your own thinking. This is done by having thoughts about yourself that carry a positive value. Equally important, by noticing your thoughts that have a negative value, you have the ability to intentionally contradict those thoughts. The second part highlights outward action. This means intentionally engaging in actions and activities that positively support your happiness and well-being. Examples of this may include participating in fulfilling activities or creating strong boundaries in relationships.

Together these two actions offer you a more complete and nuanced view of yourself. You are able to accept both your shortcomings and strengths. These actions allow you to have compassion for yourself as an imperfect, but still overall good individual. Instead of defining yourself by your flaws and mistakes, you can see them as opportunities to work toward a higher sense of fulfillment.

Self-Love Is Simple but Not Always Easy

Practicing self-love is simple because it does not require an intricate or complex process to do it. Simply put, it’s about showing love and appreciation for yourself. However, many factors can get in your way. The most difficult part is that you must keep doing it. Intentionality and commitment are key, and, to a certain extent, you have to be disciplined about it. For example, if you wake up with a loving and compassionate view of yourself, you won’t necessarily go to sleep with one at the end of the day without some effort. This is where mindfulness comes in.

Your personal history is another factor that can get in the way of self-love action. If you were given negative messages about yourself and your abilities, you likely became conditioned to believe them on a subconscious level. Unfortunately, many people spend most of their lives on the receiving end of invalidating statements. The effects are the most devastating when these messages come from the adults who are in charge of shaping a child’s view of the world. Negative messages repeated in invalidating environments have the potential to stick with us long after we remove ourselves from that environment. Raising children is difficult even in the best of circumstances; it is full of stress and anxiety, and parents are just human. Typically, a parent’s invalidating message to a child can be traced back to perhaps even harsher invalidating messaging from their own parent.

Breaking the cycle may seem like an onerous task, but it can be broken. The first step is your awareness of the problem—that somewhere deep down you believe you don’t deserve self-love—and the motivation to have things turn out differently—you want to treat yourself with love and compassion. This is what has gotten you this far.

Are You Longing to Love Yourself?

The amount of self-love you have for yourself can hold sway over many parts of your life—from feeling general dissatisfaction with life to feeling like you aren’t getting all you desire. A lack of self-love can influence your motivation to try new things. It makes it more difficult to see yourself as capable or even worthy of having a fulfilling experience. This makes it harder to put in the effort and energy it takes to try something new, and it results in missing out on opportunities to engage in activities that could provide you with contentment and joy. This means there are fewer fulfilling experiences to offset the difficult and stressful ones you have in your life.

Unhappiness or dissatisfaction in relationships can be traced back to a lack of loving and compassionate feelings for yourself. All relationships are composed of individuals, each with their own wants, needs, and desires. If you do not have a strong sense of self-love, it becomes difficult to advocate for your own needs, which negatively influences your sense of self-worth. You may not even recognize if your needs are being met. You may feel wrong for even wanting your needs to be met, or you may worry that asserting yourself will push the other person away. So, you choose to be quiet to avoid potential rejection. But remaining in an unbalanced relationship like this can easily lead to anger and resentment, reinforcing your feelings of low self-worth.

Conversely, in healthy relationships, there is an equitable balance in whose needs are being met. In the best relationships, each person feels empowered to advocate for their own needs while at the same time being accepting of the other’s needs with a willingness to compromise. This is what self-love helps you journey toward.

Self-Love for Your Own Betterment

Whatever factors influenced you to pick up this workbook, it’s fair to say that you most likely want to feel better about yourself and have a better life experience. Developing a greater sense of self-love benefits you in many ways. It can lead to improved relationships and also change the conditioned way you think about yourself and the world.

The good news is that increasing the amount of self-love you express will help you reduce the amount of time you spend feeling self-doubt, self-criticism, fear, worry, and lack of motivation. An increased belief in your worthiness can lead to increased feelings of confidence, which in turn can lead to more effective problem-solving. Being kinder and gentler to yourself increases your awareness of how kind and gentle you are being toward others. Being more effective in problem-solving and having more fulfilling relationships can be motivating. When you are more motivated, you have more energy to face life’s challenges and try new things.

It’s all interconnected. However, the reason you picked up this book and started on this journey is personal, of course. You know the true why behind your motivation to make a positive change in your life. I encourage you to remember this why throughout this workbook; keep it close so you can stay motivated and encouraged during our time together.

You Deserve to Prioritize Self-Love

Not being able to see yourself in a loving and positive way makes it more difficult to believe you are deserving of positive things. I’d argue that buying this workbook and committing to this journey is a loving thing you have done for yourself. Good job, because you deserve it.

I want you to take this opportunity to counter any invalidating beliefs that suggest otherwise. Give yourself reassurance that not only do you deserve love and positive regard, but you also deserve to make it a priority. Stop for a moment and consider all the things you have done today for other people. There may be things you are more than willing to do because you love and care for the other person or because you enjoy the positive benefits of doing those things, such as working hard at your job for a paycheck. There may also be things you just felt like you had to do.

Think about how you prioritized these things and made sure they got done because you attached a sense of importance to them. This is a chance to place the same importance on something just for you. Developing the belief that you are a deserving individual will help keep you motivated to continue making self-love a priority.

SELF-LOVE BUILDS A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR POSITIVE CHANGE

My therapy practice is called Redemption Counseling for a reason. I want my clients to view themselves not by their mistakes or the worst times in their lives but rather by how they responded to those situations. I want them to be known for their values, for the care and love they have for others, and for their unique skills, talents, and personality traits. When a person truly begins to see themselves in a positive light, the life within them shines brighter and their joy spreads to others. This is the feeling of being redeemed from those low moments with the freedom to now live and enjoy these moments.

As you move forward, start by focusing on all the positive qualities and strengths you possess. When you mindfully practice self-love, you free yourself of emotional struggles and insecurities, and in doing so, you give yourself permission to focus on all the positive things about you. The more you do so, the more you will believe that you are capable of solving life’s problems and meeting life’s challenges.

Today’s the Day to Start Loving Yourself

Now that you are motivated to begin this journey, it is time to act. There is no better time than the present to begin. The fact that you have read this far speaks to your motivation and commitment already. Opening this book is a good first step, but it certainly is not the last step. No journey of self-enhancement happens all by itself. This means that a level of intentionality is required to successfully complete the journey. Intentionality means you are doing this on purpose, or with intention. You are not waiting around for it to happen. You are making it happen!

With this in mind, it is necessary to set yourself up for success. Set aside specific time for reading and completing the exercises in this workbook. An infinite number of things compete for your attention—family, friends, work, social media, binge-watching the next season of your favorite show, or that very comfortable looking bed over there. Remember, you deserve the positive benefits of your efforts and energy as much as any of these other things. Reassure yourself that taking a reasonable amount of time each day to help strengthen your mental and emotional well-being will not prevent you from meeting all your other important obligations throughout the day.

Other than time, you will also need the tools necessary to complete your task. This may include a workspace where you can focus without interruption. Make sure that this space is stocked with any supplies you need, such as a writing utensil and paper. The most important tool you want to bring to the process is an open mind and a positive belief that your efforts will be worth it.

BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF

You deserve praise for embarking on this journey. It is natural to have trouble when trying anything new. Notice any thinking or urges to be critical or impatient with yourself. Remember the previous discussion about your worthiness to do something for yourself. Imagine the compassion and positivity you would use when trying to teach someone else something new, such as a small child learning to ride a bike for the first time. You would fully believe that they can be successful, but you would also understand that it’s reasonable for them to experience difficulty because they are trying something they have never done before. Give yourself that same grace.

BE PATIENT AND PRACTICAL

You have every reason to believe that this healing practice will be worthwhile. It is important to remember, however, that sometimes success is not experienced immediately. When you were learning to ride a bike, you probably fell off and scraped your knee a few times at first. Now, when you enjoy a ride in the park, you’re very grateful for the fact that you persevered. If you’re able to keep your expectations for yourself realistic and practical, you can reduce the amount of discouragement you will feel if you don’t see some results immediately.

SELF-LOVE ASSESSMENT

This is a quick assessment used by therapists to assess a person’s feelings about their own self-worth. The following statements deal with your general feelings about yourself. Draw a checkmark in the column that feels most accurate. Take sufficient time to consider each statement.

Please remember: This assessment does NOT take the place of a full assessment and diagnosis by a mental health professional. This is not intended to diagnose any mental health disorder. Scoring is below.