3 ways self-love and confidence are key to your mental well-being

I’m seeing a pattern emerging as I move along this journey as a hypnotherapist. All of my clients have struggled with self-love and confidence. Yes, many of them are anxiety clients, so it makes sense. But I’ve seen clients for different reasons – phobias, habits, pain, sports performance… This is something they all have in common.

Don’t get me wrong, in some cases, confidence is the main problem, or self-love. But based on many cases, self-love and confidence are key to your mental wellbeing.

Here are three ways self-love and confidence are key to your mental well-being.

1. They allow you to feel loved and respected by others

If you don’t love yourself, it’s hard to believe other people love you. So you put up a wall and stop the love from getting in. By not loving yourself, you lower your self-worth and this puts a damper on your confidence. So you’re no longer confident either. Your self-esteem plummets. When this happens, you don’t believe in yourself anymore and imposter syndrome strikes!

And because you don't love yourself and you have no confidence, you don’t respect yourself either. It’s easy to feel like no one loves or respects you when that’s the only thing you’re focusing on.

Self-love and confidence are key to your mental well-being because they open the door to external love and respect. This shows in the way you walk, talk and react to situations. You feel more confident to set boundaries and speak up for yourself because guess what? You matter!

2. You become more resilient

Self-love and confidence builds self-esteem. So when you experience a traumatic event or life just isn’t going the way you planned and changes are afoot, you feel more resilient. By resilient I mean you don’t let things get to you. You still look on the bright side. You don’t lose your humour or lose sleep over things.

Because you have the resilience to bounce back from whatever is thrown at you. Everyone has different levels of resilience. You may be someone who has been the rock for everyone else for so long. But when stresses and traumatic events pile up, your resilience is gone and with it, your confidence and self-love.

Self-love and confidence are key to your mental wellbeing because they provide you with armour to face anything! Guess what? You can! So if you’re facing difficult times, focusing on building your confidence and loving yourself will help you retain your resilience. But don’t forget to put yourself first and avoid some of those stresses if you can.

3. You feel more motivated to take care of yourself

When you love yourself, you love your body. Whatever size or shape. All of it. Then you start to notice what you’re choosing to put into your body and do with your body. Emotional eating is common in people who have low confidence and low self-love. Those feel-good foods and drinks that give you a feeling of elation and freedom from your worries may not make you feel so good later in the day. But a walk with friends might!

When you find yourself reaching for the wine every night after work, or craving a late-night snack, ask yourself ‘what would I say if I saw a friend doing this?’ Often we care more about our friend's well-being than ourselves. So this is a great way to pause and reflect.

Self-love and confidence are key to your mental wellbeing because you want to look after yourself more. You feel worthy of that care and attention. Guess what? You are worthy!

But how can you start to love yourself and build your confidence?

Tips on loving yourself

Like anything, it takes practice. I struggled with both after redundancy and I remember telling my friend that I can’t stand to look at myself in a mirror, because I hate what I see. It really upset her that I thought this way. But I did.

Self-love is about loving yourself no matter what – warts and all. I started to look at myself in the mirror and say ‘I love you’ – every day – until I started to believe it! Focus on the parts of your body or personality you usually hate and flip them – what’s good about them?

‘I hate my belly’ becomes ‘I love my belly because it nurtured my babies.’ ‘I hate that I talk too much’ becomes ‘I love that I’m talkative because it draws people to me!’

Pay attention to the love you receive, in all the different love languages there are. Whether that’s by receiving compliments, a hug, a gift, someone doing something for you, or someone putting time aside to spend with you. Think about it every day – how was I shown love today?

If you can, write it down or create something to put on your wall, so you see it every day. Why not be brave and ask your friends and family ‘What do you love about me?’

Tips for building confidence

Confidence is an interesting one. Because we all feel confident in something. Maybe you’re a confident driver or the best at baking cakes! For some reason, we can’t seem to understand that we can choose to feel confident in other situations too. Confidence takes practice, over and over again. It takes willpower to push yourself out of your comfort zone and do something you never thought you’d have the confidence to do.

So, if you’re the best baker in the world, imagine how you feel when you bake and bring that feeling up when you do something you’re not so confident with. See how it changes the outcome.

Affirmations can help – tell yourself ‘I am confident at public speaking’. Keep saying it until you feel it! Body language also helps. Do your power stance – stand with your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman before a meeting and you’ll feel different straight away!

How can hypnotherapy help?

Often our inability to love ourselves and feel confident stems from limiting beliefs hiding in our subconscious minds. They’ve been there since we were little. So ingrained in us that we truly believe that’s who we are. But guess what? It’s not who you are. Under those limiting beliefs is the amazing miracle that is you.

Working with a hypnotherapist to address these issues can help speed up the process. Often I’ve found that clients feel more confident after working with me, even if we didn’t address confidence in the sessions! The same is true for self-love. If you’re ready, book a free consultation and let’s get you back to being you again.