Self Love Tips: Look at your relationships

Welcome back to my self love tips, I hope that you are finding them helpful?

Today, I want to talk about my personal view of how relationships fit in with self love. Those of you who are new to self love may be wondering what other people have to do with SELF love. If this is you, bear with me and you will see how connected these things truly are.

Now this is not about quantity at all, it’s about the quality of your relationships and the impact they have on your ability to be yourself, take care of yourself and ultimately, love yourself.

This is also not about “loving yourself before anyone else can love you”, you are so loveable already – whether you love yourself or not.

This post is about nurturing the right sort of relationships and accepting the love that allows you to be who you truly are. One of my favourite quotes in the world is from The Perks Of Being a Wallflower;

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

It was implied in a romantic way but I think it reaches every relationship we have. What this means to me personally is;

1. My relationships (platonic and romantic) allow me to be completely myself. I am never shamed for being me but I am challenged, in a respectful and loving way, if I am acting out of character.

2. My relationships do not encourage me to self sabotage.

3. My relationships are not stagnant, they grow with us.

4. My relationships do not make me feel fearful, make me walk on eggshells or cause me pain of any sort.

5. My relationships are built on mutual interests, love, respect, support, trust and admiration.

Because this is the type of love/ relationship that  think I deserve.

What sort of love do you deserve? Are you getting it?

What are your relationships based on?

Are you feeling happy and secure in all of them?

When you start to practice self love, it is natural for your relationships to change. Especially with people that you haven’t seen in a while.

It’s normal for these relationships to either grow with you or become almost fractured.

If some of your relations become fractured, they can often be repaired by continuing to love yourself. As you may have heard from lots of people- “show people how to love you by loving yourself in the way you deserve.” This means respecting yourself, your personality and your values. It’s living the life that you dream of living.

In my opinion, people are generally scared of change and therefore resistant to it. You can overcome this by showing through actions that while this relationship will change, it doesn’t have to be for the worst.

This next bit may be difficult, but, there are also people that you may have to spend less time with or even, eventually, let go of. Not everyone is willing to adapt to change and not everyone always has your best interests at heart.

These people may mock your new found self love, they may start saying that you are “full of yourself” or have “changed too much” or something else that brings you down. What this usually means is “you are no longer providing me with what I need.” That could be as simple as they want you to be unhappy alongside their unhappiness.

Now I am not saying cut all your friends and loved ones loose, not by any means, unless you realise that it’s what is best for you… What I am saying is, up the time you spend with the people who make you feel your best and reduce the time you spend with the people who don’t make you feel good.

If you don’t have anyone who makes you feel your best or if you are looking for more deeper connections, don’t rule out anywhere to meet them! These are the places that I have met some of the closest people to me; family (sounds obvious but actually we don’t always connect deeply with family), school, work, through other friends, Instagram, Mel Wells Academy, my local pub, my hair salon, on holiday… the list goes on.

Like I said, don’t rule anyone out because of where you met if you feel a real connection with them.

The world is your playground to make friends in and it’s so much more connected now so… Go! Make lots of friends and have some fun.