What Is Self-Love And Why Does It Matter?

Self-love means that you accept yourself fully, treat yourself with kindness and respect, and nurture your growth and wellbeing.

Self-love encompasses not only how you treat yourself but also your thoughts and feelings about yourself. When you love yourself, you have an overall positive view of yourself.  It allows you to talk to yourself just like you would talk to someone you love, to be comfortable with who you are and to accept ourselves, warts and all.  Learning to being kinder to ourselves when things go wrong increases our enjoyment of life, our resilience and our well-being. It also helps us accept others as they are.

WHAT DOES SELF-LOVE LOOK LIKE?

• Saying positive things to yourself

• Forgiving yourself when you mess up

• Meeting your own needs

• Being assertive

• Not letting others take advantage of or abuse you

• Prioritising your health and wellbeing

• Spending time around people who support you and build you up and avoiding people who don’t

• Asking for help

• Letting go of grudges or anger that holds you back

• Recognising your strengths

• Valuing your feelings

• Making healthy choices most of the time

• Living in accordance with your values

• Pursuing your interests and goals

• Challenging yourself

• Holding yourself accountable

• Giving yourself healthy treats

• Accepting your imperfections

• Setting realistic expectations

• Noticing your progress and effort

WOULD YOU LIKE TO?

• Discover and let go of the limiting thoughts, fears, beliefs, feelings and behaviours that are holding you back

• Unleash your enormous potential and flow through life with brilliance by learning to relate to life in new ways

• Learn to be kinder to yourself and how to turn your inner critic into an inner coach

• Learn powerful tools and techniques to increase our enjoyment of life, our resilience and our well-being

• Learn to accept yourself, to make time to care for yourself

• Learn simple techniques to improve your relationships with yourself and others

• Overcome self-sabotage and stop the dreadful feeling that you are not good enough

• Learn how you can make your inner voice your biggest supporter and source of inspiration

• Accelerate the process of accomplishing your goals

• Learn to be resilient in tough times by mastering your emotions

• Learn to tap into the right kind of energy and vibrations to heal emotional and spiritual trauma

• Enjoy everything that matters most by experiencing more connection, contribution and celebration

Then feel free to contact me for a friendly chat to find out if I can help you to make the most of your life.

Learn to love yourself unconditionally and I promise you will fulfil your greatest potential in any area of your life.

Peace, Love & Light,

Ray Deekes
Self-Love and Happiness Life Coach

What is mindfulness and how it can help with these crazy times?

Mindfulness is living in the now. It is essentially about being more aware and awake in every moment of your life.

I discovered Mindfulness more that three years ago when a colleague at work recommended me a Mindfulness course for professional development. At that time I was suffering from high levels of stress and anxiety at work. Mindfulness meditation really helped me to start taking back control of my life by learning to relax and cope with stress even when things looked out of control. 

It took me months of commitment, dedication and daily practice to be able to discover peace, freedom and happiness with mindfulness. It was totally worth it as it has paid off with large dividends. Today I’m an enthusiastic practitioner and I’m very passionate about it. Mindfulness doesn’t eliminate the difficulties of living but it gives us the space to choose how to react. It prevent us from getting lost in stories about things that may or may not happen.

Our state of mind has a very powerful influence on how our body feels. This area of science is called mind-body medicine. As humans we get lost in our thoughts, they consume our attention most of the time. We're creating all sorts of stressors and anxieties about what ifs and maybes in the future or reliving stressors from the past, and that produces an inappropriate activation of the stress response (fight or flight).

The prolonged effect of too much stress produces a wear and tear in our immune system. It's like getting a car and absolutely flogging it to death by the way that we're driving it. So when our immunity system gets compromised, we accelerate the progression of chronic illnesses, heart diseases and accelerate the aging of the brain.

Being relaxed and aware is the mental equivalent of being fit and healthy. Mindfulness can be practiced any where, any time, regardless of what you are doing. The more you practice it the easier it gets. By practicing every single day it helps us to:

• Decrease stress, anxiety, and depression

• Support better regulation of emotional reactions and increases positive psychological states

• Decrease burnout

• Increase immunity to the influenza virus (flu) and coronavirus

• Improve relationships 

• Increase creativity

• Improve skills needed for interpersonal relationships

• Overcome procrastination and improve your productivity

• Improve empathy and compassion

Brain imaging studies also show that regular mindfulness practice produces growth in brain areas associated with learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective-taking.

Mindfulness can really help you to keep calm, find happiness and peace of mind even in the midst of dealing with coronavirus. Mindfulness for wellbeing and top performance is one of the key elements of Ray of Light Coaching Programmes.

“I cannot thank Ray enough for the help he has given me. It made such a difference. I was really struggling with anxiety and stress. As a working mum of four children I found it hard to find balance in my life. I didn’t feel I was doing good enough. I felt overwhelmed. Ray helped me to see things differently, to slow down and to focus properly on one thing at a time. Learning Mindfulness meditation gave me the skills to have more control and to function better. I struggled to fall asleep but a quick meditation along breathing techniques has completely solved this problem. I do it every night without fail. I also use this to relax and focus on the next task when I’m really busy. I’m still learning Mindfulness and I try to apply it in different areas of my life on a daily basis. It is an ongoing process but it’s really worth it for the benefits you get.”

— Emma, England

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray Deekes is a firestarter. He is passionate about inspiring and empowering others to reach their true potential and to live a fulfilling life.

He brings a mix of stress management acumen and understanding on peak performance, health & wellbeing learnt from his studies in Stress Management, Health & Wellbeing (Centre for Stress Management, London) as well over 20 years of experience in high demanding jobs working with top executives from around the world and over 30 years of sports practice. Ray is also a enthusiastic practitioner of Mindfulness (Monash University) and very passionate about promoting healthy eating (University of Aberdeen).

www.rayoflight.online