Do you harvest love for yourself?
Often, caring and loving others comes much easier than caring and loving ourselves. We seem to easily pour out kindness and compassion to our friends, yet when we peer into the looking glass we neglect to offer ourselves that same grace. By prioritizing others’ happiness and well-being over our own we hurt ourselves, and this can have a damaging effect on all facets of our daily walk. Self love gives us the foundation that we need to survive. It lays the groundwork for our own acceptance and affirmation. We must learn to be kind to ourselves, so that we can spread a more wholehearted kindness to everybody around us. Below, we’ve put together a few ways to encourage you to begin harvesting kindness and love for yourself….
Protect Your Seed
Pestilence is a top threat for farmers when growing crops. This can arise in the form of insects, animals or disease. Likewise, if we want to reap a bountiful harvest, we must protect our crops from pestilence. Self doubt, negativity, fear, and guilt are big threats that can wreak havoc on our harvest. In order to protect our seed we must set healthy boundaries. By setting boundaries we are able to know what our body needs and make it a priority. Create rich soil for your seed to grow by replacing fear, doubt and negativity with positive truth. Protecting our seeds will allow us the ability to serve and love others with our best self.
Till Your Soil
Learn to accept new challenges; accepting that yourself (and others) are going to make mistakes. See challenges as an opportunity to work through and learn to be aware of what causes them. Cultivate more mercy and less judgment. This is possible by making peace with who you are, knowing that your past doesn’t define you! Cherish the things you love about yourself and learn to manage your inner critic. You owe it to yourself to love and care for you!
Cultivate Patience & Faith
Trust yourself and listen to your feelings more instead of focusing on uncertainty. Harvesting self love takes effort and requires work on your part. The thing with self love is that you have to make the conscious effort to work towards it. It’s a continual process that a person goes through. Finding your way to self love is an amazing (yet, sometimes frustrating) process that comes with great rewards. Do your part to reap the full benefits of your time, effort and patience by keeping faith in yourself. You are beautiful, You are enough, and You have purpose.
Prune Your Crop
What type of harvest are you growing? How we define ourselves has huge impacts on the type of crop that we harvest. Sometimes we need to reevaluate our definition of ourselves in order to produce a healthy crop. Your identity is way beyond any external circumstance. Who you are can only be found in your unique, internal beauty. You are beautiful, cherished, and treasured. Be intentional and take note of the company you keep, the thoughts you think and the words you speak. Learn to become more discerning about friendships and relationships, and know that your worth isn’t based on others approval. Give compliments freely to yourself and others. Usually, we discover that through the process of encouraging those around us we, in return, we become encouraged.
Delight In Your Harvest
Finding your way towards self love is an adventure, and takes time to develop. It is an amazing (yet, sometimes frustrating) process that is full of great rewards. For example, through harvesting love for yourself, you’ll be able to share achievements and success more comfortably. You’ll discover more contentment and, happiness and resiliency. You’ll have the ability to view life events as learning experiences. Self love means getting to know yourself for you. It’s loving yourself despite what you have to endure. It’s taking care of yourself on your good days and bad. It’s knowing the best way to handle situations without comprising your position or your self worth. It’s understanding that you deserve to be happy, loved and appreciated. Next time, you peer into the looking glass, know that you were created to be marvelous. You are loved more than you know. There has never been, and there will never be another you. Hold onto these truths daily and continue to “bloom in authentic beauty"!
Jasmine Graham
PR/Editorial Intern
Tiffany Campbell
Editor in Chief