I remember staring at my coach and asking “But how do I practice loving myself more?” and she responded “Do the things you love.”

Do the things I love? This was a difficult one for me because as far as I can remember I loved doing things for others and with others, so how do I do the things I love on my own? What do I love to do? This was the next question I asked myself. I got home from the session and went straight to the internet to find self-love routines and boy, were the results vague and presumptuous. That set me on a quest to really find out how and what to do when I had my self-love days. I started making lists of the things I loved to do for and with others. I developed a system for finding out what I love to do and could do for me that had nothing to do with shopping sprees or spa days.

This was halfway through my discovery of what self-love meant to me, yes it is a personal thing but that’s where knowing your love language comes in. The five love languages according to Dr. Gary Chapman are “Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Gifts and Physical Touch”.

We normally would consider these more in romantic relationships in order to understand our partners, however I discovered that we tend to shower others with our love language. Have you ever wondered why you feel drained when in a crowd of good friends (even tough you like spending time with them) but are very happy when you’re sharing quality time with just one of them? Or why you feel dissatisfied when you prefer to keep your space tidy and would love to have your partner just clean up once without you asking?