Following on from The Gen Z Pocketbook’s second chapter on self-love, I’m excited to share this guest contribution from Sibo Hlabangana who is a 30-something year old writer and speaker. She is the creator and editor of Sibo-Lifestyle Magazine. She is also the author of 4 books, 3 of which can be found on Amazon and 1 that is free and can be found at inspirationbysibo.com under the section “my books.” Beyond that, she is a co-founder of Hosea Women International, an online women’s ministry.

These are her reflections so that we can explore this very important topic in more detail:

I know some people grow up loving themselves, I’m not one of them. A few years ago, I discovered that I didn’t love myself. Having made the decision to love myself and being conscious of it, I thought I was well on my journey to loving myself. I thought, now that I know better, I’m going to love myself. Little did I know that just knowing I have to love myself and choosing to do so were just the beginning of a life-long journey.

It’s only recently that I’ve started to take steps to actively love myself. I’m sure there are many ways to do this if, like me, you need to start loving yourself or love yourself better. I’m sharing my ways so you can pick and choose the ones that will work for you. My list might also inspire you to find your own ways.

5 ways to actively practise self-love that I’ve found helpful:

1. Self-acceptance

2. Offering yourself unconditional love

3. Positive self-talk and generally being kind to yourself

4. Writing self-love or self-affirmation letters

5. Self-celebration

Self-acceptance

I believe self-acceptance comes before self-love. You can't truly love that which you do not accept. To love yourself, you must first accept yourself. Realizing that I didn’t love myself was the first part, thanks to self-awareness. If you are self-aware, you can identify what's happening with you so that you can move forward to self-acceptance. You have to cut yourself some slack. You have to show yourself compassion. Only then, will the self-love be able to begin.

Self-acceptance doesn't mean doing nothing to improve yourself or to better yourself. It means accepting yourself as you are so you can help yourself improve or seek help from outside without judging yourself. Where you stumble, you can get up and keep going, knowing that it's okay to stumble. It's okay to fail. You just need to keep giving yourself another chance. Even if it means more and more chances every day.

Offering yourself unconditional love

It’s important to love yourself as you are because if you wait until a certain time, what if that time never comes? You can’t put conditions on you loving yourself. Real love is not meant to be conditional. Would you ever say to your friend, sister, brother or someone you love “I’ll only love you if you dress a certain way” or “I’ll love you when you are a certain weight?” or “I’ll love you if you get certain results at school.”? I doubt you’d ever say that to someone you care about. Why then would you do it to yourself? Are you not as valuable as the people you care about? To me this was such a revelation because I had never looked at it that way. Realizing that has made me think how crazy it is not to love myself. It seems silly now that I struggled with it so much, when I should love myself without conditions.

Positive self-talk

Positive self-talk is speaking to yourself in a kind and loving manner, rather than being harsh to yourself. It's important because how we see ourselves or talk to ourselves determines how we view the world. If we are harsh to ourselves, we tend to see the world as harsh. Also, our thoughts about ourselves end up being true in our lives even if they weren't true to start off with. That is the power of the tongue. We can literally speak things into being.

Joel Osteen puts it this way, "Whatever follows 'I am...' will come looking for you." So you have to watch what you say about yourself. It starts off with your inner world. Every second, you're talking to yourself in your head. Take time to hear what you normally say. Then watch what you say to other people about yourself. You might think it's okay to say "oh I'm so stupid." if that is what was said to you often as you were growing up. That alone is really unfortunate and traumatic, but please don’t be the one to keep repeating that narrative and believing it. Replace that with something positive. Don't just remove what you normally say, replace it with something positive.

Say only good things to yourself and about yourself. I am beautiful. I am lovable. I am fun to be around. I am smart. Anything else you want to represent you. The opposite is negative self-talk. Negative self-talk leads to feeling unworthy, being insecure and lacking confidence. This is not good because if you're not confident then you don't show up in the world in the way that you could. Instead of shining and letting people see you and what you can do, you shrink and hide. I think that's really sad because we want to see you at your best, we want you to shine, we want you to inspire us to be brave and be ourselves. 

Writing self-love or self-affirmation letters

One other way I’m showing myself love is writing letters to myself. In these letters, I am kind to myself and I affirm myself so I can read them when I’m feeling like I’m not enough or I’m being unkind to myself for whatever reason. Here’s an example of a letter I wrote to myself in case you choose to start writing letters to yourself too:

My love,

I started crying as I wrote “my love.” I’m not really sure why. At a guess it could be I haven’t always thought of me as my love, not really seen myself as someone to be loved, which if you ask me is sad. I am loveable. I am worthy to be loved. It’s okay to love myself, in fact it is imperative that I love myself. I show people the best example of how to love me so it needs to be a great example.

I’m on this journey of choosing me, of putting me first, of loving me because I matter. In the same way that I believe others matter, I matter too. I don’t have to feel bad for taking this time to not only work on me but to accept me as I am. I am a beautiful, kind, loving human being who deserves love. That love starts with me. Not me in a year’s time, not me at a certain weight, not me after achieving certain things but me right now, as I am. I want to reach a point where I love my arms as they are, where I love my tummy as it is, where I love my hips as they are, where I love my smile as it is, my eyes as they are. To look at myself in front of a mirror and love everything I see.

With love,

Sibo. August 30, 2020.

Self-celebration

Find ways to celebrate yourself, however that looks like for you. It could be praising yourself after achieving something or saying how proud of yourself you are for being the person you are. As part of a continuous journey of self-love and self-celebration, I asked myself how I see myself. I wrote down what I see as my best qualities. I then wrote down qualities that I would like to see in myself. Together they form how I now choose to view myself. The result was the below poem. I’m not a poet so bear with me and don’t expect any rhyming or anything like that. I’m sharing it in case you consider writing your own poem about yourself. These are only the first two stanzas.

Sibonginkosi, African Queen – A self-celebration poem

All hail the African Queen, Daughter of the Most High God

Made in the image of God, royal blood flows through her veins

A beloved daughter, Yahweh is pleased with her and she knows it

She has nothing to prove, in Him she is already approved

Known before she was formed in her mother’s womb

Not only does she know who she is, she knows whose she is.

 

All hail the African Queen, Daughter of the Most High God

As she walks into a room with grace and poise, the atmosphere shifts

She is beauty personified, in body, soul, spirit and heart

A gift from God, as her name suggests, we thank God for her

With obedience and submission she serves her God

With her smile she puts a smile on the faces of all she encounters.

I hope going forward you decide to love yourself and show yourself love in different ways, whether it’s the ones I’ve shared here or any other way you choose. It’s a thoughtful daily and lifelong practice as you grow and react to changing circumstances. I’m happy to have realised how important it is and hope you can experience the same joy, confidence and peace that comes with deep self-love.

If you’d like to get in touch with Sibo or follow her work, her details are:

Email: sibo@inspirationbysibo.com Twitter: @sibohlabangana and Instagram: @sibohlabangana1