How do you express your love to your friends and family?
Do you share your appreciation of them in messages or conversation? Do you plan special activities to do with them like attend a concert or go on a trip? Do you do small acts that show you care like bring them a coffee or bouquet of flowers?
What else do you do to express your love?
Now consider – how do you express love towards yourself?
Maybe you had to pause for a moment to consider this. Loving ourselves doesn’t always come naturally or easily. We often criticize or judge ourselves. Accepting ourselves with unconditional love – that’s more difficult!
You probably already participate in some form of self-care – maybe going for a massage or getting to bed early or eating healthy food. That’s a part of self-love, but self-love can expand far beyond self-care.
Self-love includes accepting yourself fully as you are. A good mantra might be, “I am who I am, and I am enough.”
Self-love means giving yourself compassion, respect and understanding, being gentle to yourself as you journey through the ups and downs of life. Self-love is identifying your needs and making them a priority.
Do you need to strengthen your sense of self-love?
If you do, creativity can be a wonderful way to do this!
Creativity’s an expression of who we are as human beings. We’re born as creative beings with unlimited possibilities. When we tap into our creativity, we open ourselves to expressing our true nature.
Creativity takes you out of your day-to-day life and brings you back to your inner child to engage in play, giving you more joy. It can also help you to express your feelings, identify your passions, make sense of painful moments or discover your dreams in life.
Whether you sing, journal, draw, dance, or something else, being creative can help you feel more empowered, confident and courageous about who you are as a human being and deepen your love for yourself.
Today, I invite you to jump into a creative activity by writing yourself a love letter. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, shares these thoughts about writing a love letter to yourself:
“I invite you today to come back to your true nature…by writing yourself a letter from love. …write what you have always wished that somebody else would say to you. Give yourself reassurance, forgiveness, affection. You already know how to do this, because you have spoken to other people with loving kindness in your life: It is no different when addressing the self. Write the words that you would say to a beloved friend who was having a tough time—or even a stranger. Write the words that you have offered to other people you loved, who were suffering. Why would you not be entitled to the same grace and kindness? Are you different from everyone else? Are we all not equally in need of mercy and gentleness?” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Here is a prompt from E. Gilbert to get started-
“Write a letter from love. Begin your letter with this question: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” And then let love itself write a letter to you. Trust that you are worthy of this compassion and affection. And trust—please trust, my friend—that every word of your letter is true.”
Give this a try and let me know how it goes!
Was this easy or hard to do? Did you feel more love for yourself when you were done?
I hope you’ll dive into being creative in many different forms in the coming weeks, discovering more of who you are as a human being and deepening your love for yourself.
Interested in exploring creativity in just 5 minutes a day? Check out my Free Offering “Creativity Bowl”. Get ready to let joy and spontaneity into your days. Find out more here.
