Self Love Society #2: Lauren from The Positive Page
Happy Sunday! It's time for the much-anticipated second entry in our Self Love Society blog series, giving you access to resources and techniques to help you in your own personal journeys to self love! Today's entry has been kindly penned by Lauren from The Positive Page, a website that gives you a space to explore and discuss all of the different ways you can help yourself and others with mental health and self-esteem issues.
So, keep reading to find out about what The Positive Page is all about, how Lauren herself practices self love, and her three Top Tips to Self Love! You can also find Lauren and The Positive Page on Instagram and their shop on Etsy!
Hello! I am Lauren and I run a website called The Positive Page which aims to help those affected by mental illness and low self-esteem. I do my best to provide helpful reminders through posts, products, and things for people to get involved with, to either aid their own recovery or to help communicate what they struggle with to their loved ones. I think building communication about mental illness to the people you interact with each day is super important when it comes to recovery. I wanted to make The Positive Page to reach as many people as I can who are unsupported when they should be.
The support system in place to help mental illness needs improving. There are thousands of people struggling and are not able to get help. No one should be unsupported, untreated or feel as if they have to cope alone. I wanted The Positive Page to reach out to those people, tell them they’re not alone, that I can see them.
I like to think that my Instagram posts which encourage people to be kind to themselves will help them have a better relationship with themselves, even if it's just a little bit. I think it's important to remind people that they’re allowed to like themselves, that in doing so you’re not being selfish or a bad person. I also have a few products in my shop which help to remind people that they are enough.
For me, finding self love isn’t a matter of loving my physical being. Learning to love myself is having confidence and faith in my abilities as a person who’s just trying to find their way in the world. It’s the idea that I care about myself enough to know the love and kindness I deserve, and to not settle for those who do not treat me with that level of kindness. To see that I am capable of things and to not put myself down because others can do things that I can’t. To have patience and to be gentle with myself.
Self love for me is not necessarily looking in the mirror and liking what I see, it's more about liking myself as a whole person. To do this I think the most important thing is to give myself enough time to identify my needs and to not feel the need to punish myself for finding things hard sometimes. Rather than getting frustrated and angry at myself for struggling mentally, I find acceptance and care. This therefore enables me to be able to have patience when trying to battle those struggles and to be able to celebrate my own wins without guilt. Self forgiveness and patience, I personally think, is the key.
LAUREN'S 3 TOP TIPS FOR SELF LOVE!
- Treat yourself with kindness not resentment. Do this by having patience with your feelings.
- Have self forgiveness. It’s okay to make mistakes and we have to let go of the guilt and self hate we hold against ourselves because of those mistakes.
- Don't wait for others approval to feel validated. You already are.
Once again, massive thanks to Lauren for putting together such a helpful and informative post, be sure to go give her a follow on Instagram and visit her site! That's all for this week, but we'll be back again in 7 days time with the next entry in our Chronically Creative series! See you there and have an amazing week!