The Importance of Self Love Around Valentines Day

Silatha Founder, Veroniek Vermeulen, is on a quest to empower women through all stages of life with meditation, while breaking through existing taboos.

Veroniek enjoyed a strong career as a Senior level marketing expert. At some point in her professional life she realised that status and money weren’t making her happy. A life changing experience amidst the beautiful surroundings of the Himalayas got her in contact with meditation and this led to the creation of Silatha, a company that wants to improve the mental health of women harnessing a special meditation method that becomes a long lasting habit: www.silatha.com

Keep Your Cup Full with Self-Love

Come Valentine’s Day, and we all start thinking about love; love towards your partner, kids, parents, friends, etc.. But what about loving and supporting your own self?

This is particularly true for mums who tend to give as much as they can to their kids and family and may forget about their own needs at times. Self-love and self-care are the foundation of true balanced wellbeing. As the saying goes, you can’t give from an empty cup, so topping out your own resources is crucial to mums. Practicing self-love, on Valentines and any other day, is a wonderful way to keep your cup full.

Here are some practical steps towards creating and cultivating long-lasting feeling of self-love for you to try:

1. Discover Yourself

Start with making a list of all of your positive traits. Be honest, you have more than you think! Ask people around you to help you with this task. What do what they value in you? Take your time with this list and remember that it’s never going to be fully complete, as we all evolve all the time.

Then start with your less “pretty” parts. How do you respond when you do not like something? Are you comparing yourself to others? How do you react when you make a mistake? How do you handle your negative emotions? Do you trust yourself and others? Are you blaming others at all? What are your deepest emotions, patterns and limiting beliefs that you have? List them all down. Again, be totally honest with yourself.

2. Self-acceptance

Congratulations! You made a big step in being honest and open to yourself. It’s time to give yourself a big hug. Speak out loud that you love yourself, use your name when you do this, even though it may seem like a strange exercise. Do this as long as it feels comfortable.

While you literally embrace yourself, start to welcome all that is you, let it all be and feel that all you listed is beautiful and okay.

3. Forgive…

The key now is to forgive yourself, let go of everything you think you did wrong in the past, for all you believe are not the best parts of you and for all that you will do in the future. Know that you are perfect as you are.

Holding grudge towards others, big or small, is not supporting your self-love either. Let go of any negative thoughts you have towards others. Just like you, they also do the best they can. Remember  that, if you were in their shoes, with their life experience, you would act the same way. So let go of judgement and grudge and love and embrace everyone in your life.

4. The importance of boundaries

Now that you have spent some time contemplating on who you are, it’s time to set your boundaries. Being aware of what you’re okay with and what you’re not okay with. Knowing what your boundaries are allows you to know when to say yes and when to say no.

It may be the case that you tend to say yes to many people and situations where you don’t mean it, ending up pleasing others. Remember that this comes at the expense of your own well-being.

So knowing what your boundaries are allows you to truly see what you can or can not accept. Next step would be starting to implement this new approach. To have the courage to say no when it’s a no for you even if others may get upset. The most important thing is for you to be true to yourself.

Same applies to you: only YOU are responsible for your reactions. Remember that you are in charge of how you react.

Now take a moment to reflect on what your boundaries are.

5. Positive Affirmations

You may now bring in more support, love and compassion by working on some affirmations that you can repeat daily such as:

• I am enough.
• I am good enough. I am gifted.  I am confident.  I am kind.
• I am compassionate. I forgive myself.
• I am perfect as I am.
• I know how to care for myself and love myself unconditionally.
• I am love.

Feel free to come up with your own versions that work for you

6. Meditation to create more self-love

Meditation is a great way to connect to yourself and cultivate self-acceptance. There are many ways to meditate; we recommend the Silatha Self-love meditation series on the Silatha app where you can find more than 50 meditations that guide you in growing your self-love. To get a taster of Silatha meditations you can follow this practical self-love meditation session.

7. An ever-lasting Journey

Remember that building more self-love doesn’t come overnight. Be patient with yourself. Notice when you act ‘not in line with the core of your self-love’. By becoming more aware, you have a good chance that you do it differently next time. Already acknowledging it is a great step on your journey.

For more information on Silatha, here is their website and socials To download the Silatha app and explore how the self-love meditations can enhance in your life, click here: