OH, THAT DAY OF THE YEAR. I’D LIKE TO SHARE 5 WAYS TO LOVE YOURSELF this Valentine’s, because you are the most important person in your life! Whether you’re paired up or flying solo, the first relationship we should work on is the one we have with ourselves. Lack of self-love can lead into all sorts of harmful behaviours – overindulging, overspending, undercharging for your work, mingling with the wrong crowd, and missing opportunities. Once we build a good relationship with ourselves, money problems will also miraculously disappear.
Stop comparing yourself to others.
Everyone has their own journey – we all follow the law of growth in a different way. It’s easy to look up to someone (or worse, look at someone with envy) and compare. How come they have all that, while I have nothing? First of all, it’s hard to believe you have nothing. We are blessed in so many more ways than meets the eye. If you have more than one garment, more than one cup, and more than two things in the fridge, you are rich because you have a choice.
Besides, most people most people self-doubt, self-sabotage and suffer from the impostor syndrome. Who you compare yourself to has the exact same issues. They may be struggling with debt, overspending and secretly struggling to make ends meet – what you see is not always what you get.
Your net worth is not your self worth
It’s tempting to put all our value on the size of our credit card. We want a nice home, a fast car, luxury items and trips to the Maldives while the current reality just doesn’t match these expectations. It can be painful. I know because I grew up poor. While my classmates had all the latest bags, trainers, and tamagotchis (can anyone remember those?), I wore second hand clothes and cheap shoes. It’s easy to feel inferior or even worthless. However, the money you have and your buying power have nothing to do with your worth as a human being.
We are souls in the process of evolution – sometimes hardship is the way to love ourselves. In order understand our full potential and love ourselves. If it hadn’t been for my tough childhood, I wouldn’t be here talking to you about personal finance. Money is just a tool, not a benchmark for anything.
The importance of discipline
Valentine’s Day is for indulgence: chocolates, champagne, gifts and bubble baths… If it wasn’t for covid, we’d even go on a weekend getaway somewhere luxurious. I have no problem with that if these expenses are planned ahead and there’s (you guessed it) a sinking fund set up for this specific purpose. However, real self-love is not about indulgence: it’s about exercising when you’re tired, eating broccoli when you really want pizza, and honouring your commitments. If you have decided to save $500 this month, don’t spend it “because it’s Valentine’s Day and I deserve it” – no, you deserve an emergency fund, or the shares you can buy instead and the security it’ll bring you in the future!
Financial literacy is a form of self love. Getting your finances under control, even if it requires discipline and temporary sacrifice, is a form of self love because skipping a gift today means being able to give yourself something much greater in the future – financial freedom.
You can read more on how to stay motivated while saving here in one of my previous posts.
Filters on
The hardest part for me has definitely been learning to filter negative thoughts. Especially in our current pandemic situation, it’s common to be completely panic-stricken at least once a week. Uncertainty, fear, dissatisfaction… And the rest. What if I lose my job and run out of savings? …Something happens and I’m not financially prepared? What if…? And here we go, worst case scenario re-played once again. A few months ago, as soon as I read the news or talked to someone toxic, my bubble burst and I got overwhelmed by negative thoughts.
But then, thoughts are just that – they’re a form of energy that comes and goes, and you can actually choose what to let in. Thoughts are like trains, or ships passing by. We don’t hop on just any train, do we? Mel Robbins has a great technique called the five-second rule – count backwards from and take action. This will cut the negative thought pattern immediately. The more we trust ourselves and the Divine Source Energy, the less likely we are to suffer from anxiety or let negativity affect us.
Filtering thoughts is constant work – what helps is avoiding the news, cutting out toxic people, and surrounding yourself with positive things that bring you joy and security. I could talk about this all day, but here’s the thing: we control our thoughts, not the other way round. You just have to find the right technique.
Pay off debt
Few things conjure up dark emotions than debt. It makes you feel paralysed, worthless, hopeless. A member of my family has been paying off debt for years now – it feels endless. She never seems to be able to keep enough money. A way out of this black hole is to take control: you have a debt, start making bigger contributions towards paying it off. It’ll give you back your power…. and you’ll actually pay the sucker off sooner. If you have multiple debts, pay the smallest off as soon as possible and then move on to the next, and to the next. This method is called the debt snowball – thank you, Dave Ramsay, for teaching this.
Seeing the debt get smaller and smaller makes you feel bigger and bigger. You discover that you can take charge of your life, and that if it’s possible to get out of debt, anything else is also possible.
I want to leave you with that. Any of these five tips, if taken seriously, can lead to the next step, and the next until we realise that we are capable for so much more that we could ever imagine. That we are not just loveable, but awesome.
This Valentine’s Day, celebrate with chocolate and champagne – but don’t stay there, keep moving.