100 Days of Self Love

I swear I didn’t forget about this Motivation Monday, I just got really into editing my new video. Whoops!

Anyway, a few months ago I made a couple of posts relating to self love and specifically my lack of it. The first post was a rant which led to a deep dark spiral of hating myself, and was about my inability to be happy with who I am (mostly physically, somewhat mentally). The next post was about how I wanted that to change, so last Valentine’s Day I started an exercise called 365 Days of Self Love, where every night for a year I have to write down something I love about myself, and it should ideally be something new every night.

Well, as the title gives away, last night was my 100th night of this exercise, so for today’s Motivation Monday I thought I would check in on my progress.

I’m nowhere near entirely better. Self love is a process, and I don’t think it ever truly ends. I am doing a bit better, though, particularly when it comes to my personality. Most of my “I love…”s are about my personality, with few being about my appearance, and almost none being about my body. Still, it’s a start. A good one.

Ironically, today I found myself running with the mentality “run until every ounce of fat falls off your body.” I know that’s not realistic or particularly healthy, but my stomach and love handles kept showing between where my shirt went up and my pants went down and Norwegians are so thin and fit andIjustgotsofrustratedIwantedtocry.

But I didn’t.

I ran and I ran until I couldn’t anymore, and then I turned back around and kept running. I don’t love my body. I like my personality, my determination and drive, and my desire to learn new things. I like my nose, my hair, my bone structure, and the proportions of my body. I don’t like the unhealthy fat that falls off of every part of it. But I am going to change that.

I know that loving myself won’t be much easier when I’m thinner if I don’t learn to do it when I’m overweight, but I can say today, 100 days after starting this experiment, that if anything I am committed to getting to a place where I am happy with my body mentally and physically. I want to be healthy, and that means in both ways.

So if you’re struggling with similar issues, I encourage you to take some little step towards personal acceptance. Maybe you can start your own journal, and maybe one day you can look back on it and feel like there’s been a real change in you. Do let me know how that goes for you, as well as if you have any tips for me.

To end this, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite entries of the last 100 days:

day 6, 19/02/2015: I love that I take the time to take care of myself.

day 31, 16/03/2015: I love the way I’m honest with myself about my mental condition.

day 36, 21/03/2015: I love my drive and desire to be ruthless.

day 53, 07/04/2015: I love that I’ll never grow too old to love Disney.

day 60, 14/04/2015: I love the general structure and proportions of my face. It’s a good face 🙂

day 83, 07/05/2015: I love my whims of inspiration.

day 87, 11/05/2015: I love that even though I doubt myself 99% of the way, I know to work at it, because nothing will get better on its own.