Top 5 Ways To Practice Self-Love During The Holiday Season

The holiday season can be a time when rejuvenation through self-love can be crucial. Often, self-love is the way you approach self-care.

Activities like massages, manicures/pedicures, hair treatments, and shopping can be touted as self care. These can be helpful ways to relax, but not having them on your calendar doesn’t mean you are failing at self-care.

In fact, there are small ways to love yourself every day without booking an appointment at all. Rest, retreat, and less contact aren’t the only ways to indulge yourself with self-love or support your mental health.

Sometimes, the most needed form of self-love is connection with others. Honor that for yourself.

Holiday self-care doesn’t have to look different than any other time of the year.

You can use mental health tools during the holiday season and beyond to create happiness and show compassion or kindness in your life. You get to take time to understand yourself.

Think about what you like to do so that you can show up for yourself whenever you need it the most and when you don’t.

Self-love is a practice, and failing one time, doesn’t mean that you can’t try again. You won’t always be kind with words and actions, but you can try to treat yourself gently consistently.

Self-love is for everyone. Whether you believe you deserve self love or not, the answer is that you do.

Here Are The Top 5 Ways To Practice Self-Love During the Holiday Season 

1. Allow yourself to make a mistake.

Perfectionism can be rampant when you feel out of control and need to safely insert control back into your life. It can also cause unnecessary stress. When stressful situations or events arise, you may want to make things perfect. Perhaps you feel if you are perfect, you may feel more worthy of love or care.

Read More: “What Is Mental Health And Why Is Mental Health Important?”

You are lovable without being perfect.

The truth is that there can be loneliness in perfection because your goals are unattainable, and generally, there is only room for one person at the top.

When you recognize that making a mistake is okay, you slowly start to free yourself from self-flagellation and critical messages.

Surround yourself with people who accept you when you do make a mistake, including yourself.

This can come up during holidays, especially when friends and loved ones are consistently posting to social media platforms like Instagram as well as Facebook with perfect moments in their own life.

If you can’t truly be happy for a friend on social media, mute them for a while. You don’t have to indulge in shame hits or suppress feelings that are coming up for you.

By listening to yourself, you are performing self-love when you don’t abandon how you feel. Allowing yourself to comfortably make a mistake can be difficult, but it starts with you.

When you begin to equate self-worth with who you are at your core rather than how you look to others, you have made a step toward self-love.

2. Get to know yourself.

For example, the simple act of lighting a candle to create ambiance and an enjoyable scent in your space is self-care.

The process of truly understanding your favorite scents, quality of product, mission statements of brands, and discerning when you feel ready to blow out the candle are all elements of self-love.

You can show love by discerning how you want to show up for yourself in every moment. When you begin this discovery, you may think it is silly or brush it off as not important.

Remember that you live with yourself your whole life so no act is too small.

Developing a self-care routine with love can help improve your everyday life and mental health while reducing your stress level. Thinking about what you truly enjoy can make all the difference.

3. Create moments of joy.

Joy is one of the most vulnerable emotions, which is why it can be difficult to pursue in your life. This is especially important during the busy holiday season.

You have choices in the way you participate in holiday traditions, including opting out or creating new ones.

If you are feeling guilty for having joy when others don’t, adjust your ego. If you feel like you don’t deserve joy, get curious about why you are playing the part of a victim.

When you get uncomfortable with others experiencing joy, examine your expectations. Staying curious rather than judgmental can help soften your critical voice. 

You will have moments when you judge others and yourself, which is a moment to shift into curiosity so that you don’t get stuck in shame.

Read More: “Things To Do In Denver To Help Shift Your Mood”

Often, nature is a place to play and have fun. You can go on hikes, explores fields, climb mountains, and dip into hot springs depending on what surrounds you.

Taking care of the quietest parts of yourself can be the loudest acts of self love.

When you choose to bring bubbles with you, a hula hoop, or even treating yourself to a lollipop; you are dipping into your childlike self who craves connection and wants to experience joy frequently.

You can experience joy through gratitude as well, though forcing it is not helpful.

Creating joy can be stunted when you have consistently heard critical messaging in your life, experienced dysfunction, or have a rocky relationship with religion or spiritual exploration.

Unconditional love for yourself isn’t conditioned by external factors.

4. Sit with uncomfortable feelings.

When you get bogged down with all of your thoughts or dissociative behaviors, you don’t allow space to sit with uncomfortable feelings.

It’s not necessarily an enjoyable experience, but it is worth your time so that you can process and move forward. It is a form of abandonment to consistently suppress what you are feeling.

Read More: “How Mindfulness Helps With Anxiety”

If you don’t allow yourself to feel sadness or anger, it can lead to depression.

Big emotions can be difficult and can cause extra stress or anxiety.

Even though it may seem like there are negative and positive emotions, all emotions serve a purpose and are temporary.

If you consistently tell yourself that something isn’t true when there is a part of yourself that believes it to be true, accept the event or feeling as truth.

You may avoid being gaslit by others and then gaslight yourself instead. There are some memories or events that you aren’t ready to experience yet.

Trust yourself to feel them when you are ready.

When you start to feel overwhelmed, you can practice mindfulness, meditation, or take a breath. A healthy habit can start at any time.

By allowing yourself space to feel, you are developing self love.

5. Set Healthy Boundaries.

You may disappoint other people when you set a boundary, but you can’t control their reactions. Boundaries are for you. It can feel like you are self-absorbed rather than wrapping yourself in self-love when you say no to others. The truth is that you get to stop old narratives at any time.

Read More: “Five Truths About Self-Love. The Benefits And How-Tos”

If you feel guilt for setting a boundary, it may be because you are showing up in a way that a person didn’t expect.

There may be feedback from the other person. You don’t need to over-apologize for saying no.

This can lessen the impact of your words and response.

Allow no to be a complete sentence. This isn’t always easy, but it can be necessary.

You can set a boundary with time at a holiday gathering, the amount of money you are willing to spend on a holiday gift and prioritizing your self-care practices.

Self-love normally starts with a boundary because you need the space to discover.

Boundaries show you who fits into your life and who doesn’t.

This can change at any time. It is okay to normalize those goals, patterns, and daily life can change which may mean that friendships and familial relationships end.

Part of self-love is surrounding yourself with a loving circle.

Self-love is a process, and when you have a willingness as well as a desire to show up for yourself differently, you can make changes.

When you love yourself, you can more easily participate in loving interpersonal relationships at home, work, and throughout your day.

You don’t have to love yourself first to be loved, and it can be a place to start. Self-love can mean freedom from consistent critical messages, peace within, and a break from shame. 

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Written by: Randi Thackeray, MA
Clinically Reviewed and Edited by: Julie Reichenberger, MA, LPC, ACS, ACC