Learning how to love yourself can be a difficult task, especially if there are negative messages playing in your subconscious mind. Many of these messages were recorded sometime in your childhood. I’ll bet you didn’t realize just how much influence your parents and teachers had on you!

The negative messages that you may have heard could have been hard to mistake: someone telling you that you were no good, for instance. Or someone may have told you that you would never do anything of value with your life. But some messages may not have been as easy recognize as negative messages. These could have been someone telling you that you have a learning disability. This could forever change the way you tackle anything you’ll ever come against.

The challenge as adults is to take those negative words and replace them with positive ones. Although it won’t happen over night, it can definitely happen. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

• Existing beliefs

This is a good place for everyone to start. You may think that there are some old recordings playing in your mind, but maybe you aren’t sure what they are or where they came from. In order to figure out what it is that’s holding you back in your life, you’ll need to go on a journey of sorts. You can do this alone, or with a friend or partner that you trust. You’ll want to start to ask yourself questions like these – “My earliest memory of feeling stupid is…” “My mother (or father, or teacher) always made me feel…” etc. The premise is that you want to explore the earliest feelings that you had in order to uncover the reason you feel the way you do today.

Once you understand where they came from you can start to ask yourself whether or not the statements are true now, or if they ever were true. Next, you can decide what you WANT to be true and create affirming statements that you can say everyday that will start to replace those negative recordings.

• Emphasize the good

Think about a woman who really loves the way her eyes look, but not necessarily the way her lips look – she will put on her make-up in such a way that her eyes are emphasized. You need to do the same type of thing when it comes to your qualities. When your self-esteem is low, you tend to focus on all the things that are “wrong” with you, but you forget about all the wonderful qualities that you do have. Not only can you help to emphasize the good qualities by positive self talk, but you can also create a physical reminder. Write down your best qualities on two pieces of paper. Place one on your bathroom mirror (we see that at least once per day!) and put one in your wallet. When you find yourself in a negative place, look at these qualities and remind yourself just how wonderful you are!

• Love yourself

This seems pretty obvious, but it’s often the last thing we do for ourselves. We are so concerned with putting everyone else in front of our own needs that it’s often left sitting in the dust. Think about your last or current relationship. When you first met, you spent a lot of time, attention, and affection on one another, right? One of the best ways to learn how to love you is to allow yourself to enter into a similar process – except this time, the love affair will be with yourself. Start doing things that make you feel happy, sweet talk yourself, and spend “quality time” with yourself.