Self-Care is Self Love

It warms our hearts to see that the trend of self-love is here to stay. For the last couple of years, there has been a focus on prioritizing our relationship with ourselves and how it impacts every area of our lives. Our relationship with ourselves affects how we experience routine and significant moments in our lives. It is the cornerstone of our ability to flourish fully and evolve into who we are meant to be.

What is Self-Love?
As awareness of self-love grows, the definition can develop nuances and become murky. If you don’t understand what it is to love yourself, you stand little chance of fully experiencing and benefiting from real love. The essence of self-love is about ‘being’ and is something you come to experience through self-understanding and acceptance. One way to get on the right foot with self-love is to start with self-care. The two are intertwined. Self-care is the part of self-love that involves you taking care of yourself, as opposed to you taking care of others or allowing others to take care of you.

When you know and understand yourself, self-love becomes much easier and is nearly automatic. In the day-to-day of life, it looks like what you typically categorize as self-care: working out, eating right, getting enough sleep, and taking time to relax. But it’s also clarifying and setting boundaries, choosing loving relationships, learning new things, questioning your beliefs, having fun, planning for your future, dealing with your struggles head-on, living intentionally, asking for help, and keeping your stress levels in check. It’s about being responsible for yourself in various types of ways.

You can even throw in keeping consistent, traditional acupuncture appointments in your self-care bag. It is dedicated time to focus on you. Self-care means mindfully and consistently nurturing all aspects of your well-being: spiritual, physical (where we tend to mainly focus our self-care), intellectual, relational, and emotional.