Unfortunately, life presents us with toilsome challenges and painful pick-your-brain-scratch-your-head moments both personally and professionally but with the help of self-love, you’ll come to learn that your morals or values do not need to be contradicted and you do not need to marginalise your inner beliefs.
Self-love isn’t selfish, it is sensible and totally acceptable and I fully encourage it. Simply to put it, self-love doesn’t make you a bad person or self-conceited much like society portrays to us, in fact, it makes you a better person and one whom values your self-worth and respects the unconditional love you have towards yourself. Society teaches us that just by loving our selves and being self-assured that we are automatically ‘unlikable’, perceives us as ‘spoilt’ or ‘self-centered’ and in business, it deems us as ‘narcissistic’ arrogant’ or in many cases, ‘unprofessional’ which can lead to many business foundations uprooting. Let’s not get confused between actual self-love and narcissism, since there is a huge distinction between the two, I am not a fan of narcissistic behaviour just as the next best person isn’t either.
Furthermore, with self-love being such a complex issue, it goes as deep as to say that for the people who really do love who they are, have somewhat convinced themselves that they are one of the chosen few of that possessing the special ability to master magical thinking. I for one, completely disagree, as I am sure many other entrepreneurs do, and so I delve into my ideological reasoning on why self-love is essential as an entrepreneur and any business journey and a few tips on how to practice the art of self-love without total character assassination.
Self-love helps your decision process. As an entrepreneur, every day you are faced with many laborious issues throughout business building. Not only does self-love give you the confidence to shine within negative situations or whilst in toxic environments, but it gives you the ability to form a clear mindset that will allow you to make logical decisions based great judgment. It will highlight your previous experience and acquired knowledge and remind you that it’s totally ok to put yourself, your needs and happiness first if it works best for you.
Self-love gives you self-confidence ownership. Possessing self-confidence and self-belief is important as an entrepreneur, since having a talent or strong academic qualifications in today’s fast-moving economy simply isn’t enough. Having the confidence in who you are and your abilities means you will never question what you stand for and give you the courage to take risks and bang down the doors that will excel your business growth.
Self-love will re-enforce the clarity of your vision and will enable you to focus your mindset on relentlessly going after what you truly want, whilst building the resilience you need as an entrepreneur when facing occasional rejection. You will understand that nothing is personal, it’s just business. Despite the many obstacles entrepreneurs face, having a strong clear vision provides the real purpose behind what you do, helps you set new goals and encourages you to keep jumping over the barriers faced along the journey.
Self-love doesn’t give room for comparison. You are you, you are in your own lane and you should be focusing on the mission you set out to achieve. When you learn to self-love, you will figure out that everyone is on their own journey to succeed in life with a mission at hand, and you need not look at how others are getting to where they are going or how they got there if they ever did. There is so much space in the world for each and every one of us to be doing something uniquely amazing, so instead of comparing yourself to somebody else and their wins, identify your own self and celebrate your own wins. I guess it doesn’t hurt to reinforce the whole #BEYOUROWN concept here does it?!?
Self-love maintains PMA. Being positive every second of the day does take some effort and it isn’t always that easy when you endure challenges. However, self-love will force you to implement a positive mental attitude in your daily life that will naturally skyrocket your energy levels. It will give you the open-minded mentality you need to let go of any negative thoughts or toxic energies and will manipulate you into rooting out only the positives. We all know that negative thinking can only drag us deep into a dark abyss and lessen our chance of success, so administer some self-love and say hello to your charismatic top performing self.
So here are my 5 top tips on how to introduce self-love throughout your business journey:
- Avoid doubting yourself and your capabilities, you can do it and you know you can.
- Forgive yourself if you made a mistake or took a wrong turn, we all mess up from time to time.
- Be kind to yourself and love who you truly are, including you all of your flaws.
- Prioritise yourself, caring about your inner happiness does not make you selfish at all.
- Reward yourself, celebrating your accomplishments will remind you that hard work pays off.
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Originally published at beyourown.org