It’s time to really embrace who you are. You’re an incredible person, and you deserve to feel that way about yourself. In fact, you deserve to fall in love with yourself.

Self-love is something that’s often looked down upon and thought of as conceit, selfishness or something you just shouldn’t do. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Psychology Today points out that self-love is important to living well. The way you feel about yourself can influence who you pick as a mate, the image you project to others, how you cope with problems, and how you feel.

Self-love is not something you can simply decide you have. You have to work at it and reinforce your faith in yourself on a regular basis. It’s not just about liking the good things about yourself, but it’s also about embracing your weaknesses and having compassion for yourself as you work toward a more fulfilling life.

If you’re ready to begin the process of self-love, then the following tips will help you get there. Just remember, it’s a process, and you’ll need to incorporate these techniques into your daily life.

How to learn self-love

1. The Mirror Technique

If it feels silly at first, that’s okay, keep doing it. Talking to yourself in the mirror is a great way to build confidence and reinforce positive feelings about yourself.

Start in the morning by looking at yourself in the mirror and giving yourself positive reinforcement. This sets your tone for the day and makes the other self-love techniques more meaningful.

Finish your day the same way to give your subconscious mind something positive to hold on to for the rest of the night, rather than dwelling on any criticism.

2. Practice forgiveness

To move forward, you need to make peace with the past. You hear this a lot when people are talking about getting over a breakup, but it also applies to your self-love journey.

You want to grow as a person and become more content and self-realized, and this requires self-forgiveness.

If you’ve done something that bothers you, it’s essential that you first accept responsibility for what you’ve done, and accept that people make mistakes.

Learning how to have compassion for yourself can be difficult, and forgiveness can be even harder. Once you learn to turn off the negative thoughts and constant critique of yourself, you can start to forgive.

3. Take care of yourself

Whether it’s saying no to someone when you don’t have the time or the energy to do what they ask, or it’s pushing yourself to make healthy choices; taking care of yourself is vital to happiness and self-love.

Look at your life and determine what choices you’re making that are bringing you down. Give yourself permission to make better choices, have healthier social interactions, enjoy some free time, and pursue things you love.

4. Get to know yourself

Being mindful about what you really want, feel, and need can help you embrace yourself more readily. If you truly understand the things that make you tick, it’s better to make choices that support the things you want from your life.

This mindfulness can also help you break bad habits by knowing your weaknesses and understanding when you’re tempted to act on wants rather than needs.

5. Be heavy with the compliments

Compliment yourself regularly. Every time you do something you feel is right, or when you accomplish something, or even when you look good, pay yourself a compliment.

Compliments are powerful, and they bring awareness to good things, and compliments need to be spoken aloud. That’s right, you need to learn to compliment yourself out loud.

It may feel strange at first, don’t worry, with a little practice you’ll get used to it. Once you get in the habit of complimenting yourself, that inner monologue that constantly points out your flaws will begin to fade away.

When you start pointing out your good points instead of your bad, you can really begin loving yourself.

Final thoughts

Self-love is difficult for some people to practice, not only that, it can be uncomfortable to even think about it. We’re taught that it’s not good to be conceited and selfish, and self-love feels like all of those things. But self-love is so much more, it’s an acceptance of yourself and acknowledging your flaws. It’s giving yourself permission to grow and be happy and a better person.

If you are ready to begin feeling more positive about yourself, the first thing to do is to look in the mirror and list the things you like about yourself. Say it out loud. Repeat this practice morning and night to set the stage for a deeper sense of self-acceptance.

When you begin making yourself a priority and doing things that are good for you, you’ll start to see what a difference it can make in your life; and you’re worth it.