February is the month of love. Love and Valentine’s Day seem to go hand in hand.
But, instead of talking about just one day, I tend to focus on the whole month with the theme of love.
If you follow us on our social media pages, you’ll see some posts on self love.
I wanted to share more on the topic of self love and have it be something you practice for the rest of the month.
My journey with self love only started a few years ago. I know…it’s sad to say. I was always giving so much of me to others and the last person that got my love was me. Because of this, there wasn’t much to give to myself. It’s like the cup quote...you can't pour from an empty cup.
I took control of my life and my happiness. It started with giving myself permission to do more for me, to be my authentic self, and in turn that made me love myself more.
Here's some ways that you can work on loving yourself more.
Rethinking how your treat your body
Since you are reading this, you are either living a sober life, cutting back on your alcohol, or are curious about what it means to not drink alcohol or limit it. You are already practicing loving yourself because you choose not to put a harmful substance (alcohol) into your body. You are loving yourself by watching what you put inside your body.
Rethink what you eat - The same thing with alcohol happens here. Think before you choose something that might not be that healthy or eat the “not so good for you things” in moderation.
Focus on feeling fabulous and not on the numbers on the scale - The scale may show you how much you weigh, but they should only be numbers. I know I’m a few pounds over the weight I should be, but instead of dwelling on a few pounds, I should feel fabulous. I still have a lot of great features and a little muffin top shouldn’t stop me from looking and feeling confident.
Move more - it’s as simple as walking or even dancing. We do a lot of crazy dancing in our house. Get your body up and move - I promise you'll feel better!
Give me a break
Another form of loving yourself is giving it a break.
I explored the topic of rest in a few of my posts. My sister took a week off of work last week. She’s burnt out and deserves more than a week long break, but I'm happy she took some time. She was only going to take 2 days off but her boss encouraged her to take the whole week off.
She’s always hesitant because of the work she comes back to. There were 220 emails waiting for her in the inbox. Plus, a disaster! Surprisingly, she handled the disaster, put herself first by saying no to things and moved forward with grace and a glow of relaxation.
As I was writing the post on rest, my daughter was saying something about “pause.” I think she’s going to be wiser than me 
. And her words made me think…a rest is a pause. We need to give ourselves permission to pause. It’s ok to take a break! A break from life, from cooking, from being a mom, from being a partner, from alcohol, from the routine. We need to give people the green light to temporarily put things on hold that drain us or put stress on us.
Give yourself permission to pause.
Ok, one more…say nice things to yourself
It’s never too soon to teach others about self love. During a homework session yesterday, my daughter kept saying how bad her handwriting was. After 2 to 3 times of hearing this, I stopped her. “Sweetie, that’s not a nice thing to say to yourself.” A gentle reminder that we all should talk nice or reframe what we say. So instead of her words, we worked on better ones and talked about how when we work hard at something we can improve. Also, not everyone is good at everything. So, if you have bad handwriting, it's ok because you are probably good at drawing or painting or something unrelated!
It reminded me that many times we create the narratives of negativity. It’s important we love ourselves and talk to ourselves in a kind way. “Speak to yourself as if you are the smartest, beautiful, wonderful, capable person. Because the more you say that to yourself, the more you will believe it.”
Love yourself more…
It’s ok to think about you
To do what you want
When you want
And not feel guilty
It doesn’t make you a bad person
It will probably start making you feel like a better person
You are a wonderfully, amazing person
Take a minute to think about that
Now go do something for you
Love to you all from Mama with a Mocktail!