Posted by

Practising Self-love

If you scroll down your social media feed, it is almost guaranteed that you'll find atleast a few posts that talk about body positivity and loving yourself, etc.
I would read them, feel empowered, look in the mirror and go:
Girl, you're so FINE you blow my mind! Who's the smartest of them all? You are, that's who! You're imperfections are flawless as fuuck! You are doing so great!



Then I would wake up in the morning, and that sweet little voice in my head would start to sing a different song:
You are a gigantic piece of shit. A big fat waste of space garbage. Best case scenario, microbes feeding over your dead body.
And then I'll have to start to educate myself all over again on how to stop being mean to myself. Every. Freaking. Time.
Perhaps that is why I talk about "self-love" so much, because I'm so bad at it myself (but that probably makes all of us). But it is also something that I can never give up on. Now, I don't know about perfection but I'm sure "practise" do make us better at a task than our older self.

Now, how do I do that?

  • I start by befriending myself. By talking to myself like I would with my friends (FYI Rupi Kaur and I came to the same conclusion, independently!).
Eg.: Everytime, your friends say something nasty about themselves, you point out 10 different things that are good about them instead, don't you? Now, how about you extend that same courtesy to yourself? If the mirror calls you fat, look for your other qualities too, I'm sure you all are more than just that.
  • I try to remind myself not to feel discouraged from practising "self-love" when things start to go south again. Lord knows how easy it is to fall back on the wagon of self-loathing and pity. Recognising and acknowledging that there will be days when it's going to be harder to accept myself for who I am than others tend to be a good place to start at times like these.
Eg.: The first scenario. Now I try to tell myself that it's just one of those days and that it doesn't mean that everything that I hyped about myself yesterday are fiction after all. It's not. (This is probably where I struggle the most. I get intensely attached to how I feel on my good days so much so that I criticise myself for not feeling the same way all the time. Make sense?) What is true today may not be the same as yesterday, nor tomorrow for that matter. So why bother with drawing conclusions?
  • Different people have different ways of pampering themselves. There is no guide or rulebook for it. What works for others may not work for me. In fact, what worked for me yesterday may not even work for me today. All this to say that there is no short cut to practising "self-love". I am the only one who is responsible for understanding me in order to do myself some justice. Our feelings have feelings too, that needs constant attention and validation. So, self-reflection and being self-aware are the keywords here. 
Eg.- When I come across these posts that list down some activites like meditation/making to-do lists/tabulating goals/maintaining journals/being "productive", etc., either I unconciously start to feel worse about myself for not doing them at the prescribed time because I just don't want to OR I feel worse after doing them because they are not followed by the respite that, I assumed, was guaranteed. So FUCK'EM.
Well, not really..because they really are good advice...for some people...and/or at certain times. Point is, none of them are fool-proof and that's an important thing to understand.

We are one clever & sophisticated sons of bitches that cannot be satisfied with some formulated medicines. Nah-uh! The only shit that works on us are the ones that are customized. And the only one who can customize it is ourselves. yay.
But how, you ask? Refer to the Keywords. And do that on a regular basis. It may help, no guarantees though!

So go on, explore yourself! Who knows, you might just find yourself interesting!

 Until next time, cut yourself some slack and live a little :(:
Hey! I am Swastika. (not a nazi, just a naive Indian) and I also go by Trisha, my nickname, it's a Bengali thing. I am passionate about a bunch of things that I like to share here. A word that could describe me to a certain degree of accuracy is "an oxymoron". I write to make sense of the world and articulation is my way of making sense of my thoughts! Bottom line, I am a human being who you might relate with, and on most days I am upto no good. I am so happy that you are here, hope you have a great day :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts