Love yourself first and everything else will fall into place.

This became my Wallpaper and my Mantra a few years back when I was navigating a rather frustrating time period in my life.

A lot of us, especially those who have grown in huge Indian families, have seen the family members sacrificing their happiness, needs and wants for kids, grandkids and so on. Most middle class families have grown with limited resources and want to provide their future generations to the best of their abilities and in the process completely ignore themselves. Due to social conditioning, therefore, we do not believe in concepts like self-care, self-love, self-focus or at least they don’t come naturally to us. Infact, we start to associate them with being selfish and of course, want to portray the image of a provider/giver than being a selfish person.

On top of this, we rely overtly on relationships (family) and with time on any relationships, which of course are essential part of life and great to have, but, sadly, we begin to derive our happiness from these relationships! Which means we get extremely upset if something doesn’t go well in a relationship.

This could be a totally different situation for you but the point I’m trying to make is that self-care, self-love, self-focus haven’t been emphasised enough through our lives and they do not become a habit.

So, anyway, it was only a few years earlier that I realised the importance of self-care, self-love and self-focus and this realisation had a HUGE impact on my life and my happiness.

Let me ask you this:

Are you someone who has been deriving happiness from someone else? Are you someone who has never thought about self love? Are you frustrated because of others?

Believe me, I was there too.

So, what did I do?

Nothing out of the world! I simply started to consciously think about myself, what would make me happy, my likes, hobbies, also, things that were bothering me, and…started questioning why were these things bothering me!?

As I analysed and realised 'Love yourself first’, I started to make small changes in life (as below) and they brought me closer to my happy self! ☺

• Loving myself abundantly
• Stopped looking elsewhere for happiness
• Forgiving myself often
• If a negative thought comes in, realising that it’s more harmful for me than for someone else and trying to get rid of it
• Appreciating myself for small wins than wait for anyone else’s appreciation
• Thinking about a lot of positive things and talking to a lot of positive people
• Laughing a lot
• Doing what I love to do
• Writing down thoughts in a diary (free flowing)…you can just take a piece of paper

Over time, a few things happened as a result. Although small, they matter to me so much!

1. I had always loved to write poetry/shayaris (since my childhood) but did not prefer to share them publically. Now I have posted 50 so far on Instagram and Facebook.
2. I started a YouTube channel called Career with Kalpi which is a 1:1 discussion on career paths with senior folks in the industry so that the younger generation can get benefitted.
3. I started reading more, aiming for 60 books in 2021. Read 15 as of 1st June and reading a few books in parallel.

And, of course, many more things will come!!

But, most importantly, as self-care becomes a habit, you start to remove the negative chain of thoughts from your mind, as you realise that they will only harm you and take your happiness away! Slowly, you might start to filter out negative people from your life as well. Finally, this will become a positive circle…positive circle of your life!

So, comment and tell me, what are you doing for self love and self care in this pandemic?