7 Ways to Love Yourself Every Day

PenguinGirl learns about self love and loves herself.

Lately I’m starting to realize that my existence thus far has been a long drawn-out quest for Self-Love. Up until 3 years ago, I didn’t have a clue what Self-Love is, but ever since I found the courage to plunge into my artist dream by organizing my first solo exhibition, I’m learning a little more about how my previous perceptions of Self-Love are far from accurate. It would take another entire blog post to define what Self-Love is and isn’t, and I don’t believe I’m at the right place to shed some light on that at this time. Instead, I’ll share a few of my realisations and ways to show yourself a little love every day!


1) Exercise regularly

I used to tell myself that I’m not an athlete, that I suck at sports, and exercising is something simply not for me. I remember back when I was in secondary school and we had to be tested on our physical fitness and based on their standards I barely passed every single year. I hated it. I hated being the person who comes in last at the end of a 2.4km run. I hated that as much as I tried I couldn’t push myself to be faster or to hang on longer and beat my own personal record (which everyone else was beating easily). To be honest I was quite resigned about the state of my physical fitness and instead of trying to work at it regularly and get better, I told myself I was simply not athletic and will never be that way.

For the past 2 months I’ve been working out an exercise habit (pun intended). I jog about 3-5km twice a week, and I have a routine of strengthening exercises that I get on almost every day. Sure it was tough at first, and in the beginning I could barely do 20 push-ups (with my knees to the ground), but now I can do 50 at one go and I can run 5km without stopping for a little over 30 minutes. It may not seem like much to most people, but for someone who typecast herself as the not-athletic sort and would never be so, it’s definitely been a lifestyle improvement.


2) Follow a healthy diet system that works for your life

From all the dieting fads out there that I’ve attempted and read about, I've learnt one very important thing: If you want to have a healthy diet, it’s really about finding a system that will work for your life. So if you decide to do 5-6 small meals a day but your daily schedule is always irregular and you keep missing your meal times, find another system that complements your schedule. Or if you’re not good with details, then counting calories would be a bad idea. Ultimately you want to find a system that is easy to follow and incorporate in your life, and that will help A LOT with building the discipline you need to sustain it.

For myself, Intermittent Fasting (IF) has been the most effective so far. IF is based on the premise that you go without food for an extended period of time (fasts), such that your body can finish burning off the carbs you’ve accumulated from your meals and start burning your fat reserves. So my eating window is from 10.30am to 8.30pm daily, and during my fasts I drink only water. There are, of course, the occasional days where I catch up with friends over supper or later-at-night drinks but generally I keep this pattern 5-6 days a week. IF works for me because it’s a very easy system to follow, and it has allowed me to curb my bad habit of snacking late at night (which is probably how I’ve gained weight in recent years haha).


3) Do something that tests your limits (ie. outside your comfort zone)

You’ve probably come across this saying: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Some people may wonder why anyone would want to do that - like isn’t life difficult enough as it is; why add on more stress? However, it's only when you push your limits that you get to see what you are made of. Adversity in life is inevitable, and even if your life is generally smooth sailing, you'll never know what kind of shit will hit your fan. So I believe it's better to intentionally test your limits and rise to the challenge way before life forces you unexpectedly into a chaotic situation.

Earlier this year, as part of a program on leadership, I completed a marathon hike of 46km... TWICE in one weekend. Fortunately for me I had started hiking from an adventure trip in the U.S. I did earlier in 2012, so I was already somewhat physically adapted to walking long distances. Or so I thought. Little did I know that with long distance hikes, it goes beyond testing your physical limits. It reaches a point where getting through it depends on your ability to persevere one painful step at a time, and how you can support your team mates to ensure they get to finish line together with you.


4) Pick up a new skill or hone an existing one

Off a similar vein, learning a new skill not only tests your limits, but also expands your perspectives and general knowledge. As an untrained artist, I've been drawing and painting in my own way, and it's resulted in somewhat of a recognizable style but it has its limits. Hence I decided to really work on my drawing skills and follow a structure as taught by mentor. Since we started 2 months ago, I've finished 3 classic books on drawing and suddenly all the basic principles of drawing which I intuitively somehow knew before just totally made sense.


5) Spend an hour with yourself by yourself every day

When you meet the most awesome boy or the most beautiful girl and they love you back, you want to spend time with them, getting to know them better and connecting with them. Well, your self is no different from your romantic partner; in fact, your self is more important than your partner because partners will inevitably leave you (when the relationship or one of you dies), but you will be with you for the rest of your life. So isn't it worth the investment to spend time connecting with yourself and getting to know yourself better?

I try to incorporate an hour of self-time daily, and I've noticed that on the days I do spend that time, I'm more connected to my larger vision for my life, and clearer about what I need to work on in the short term to better position myself for the long run. Usually I spend the hour journaling for about 30 minutes, which really helps to sort out my thoughts and reflect upon what's going on in my life. The rest of the time I have a chat with myself and make sure I'm clear about my goals, or sometimes I fold in exercise time and go for a jog.


6) Journal first thing when you wake up

When you wake up, your mind is fresh and ready to kick start your day. But many people spend their mornings rushing to get to work, checking their emails or Facebook updates, reading the newspaper.. and basically not making the most of this critical time to set the right tone for the whole day. When you first wake up, your mind has spent the whole sleep time sorting out what happened the day before - your learnings and lessons, your emotional state, and sometimes you get dreams that still linger for a little while. Journaling in the morning helps to align oneself such that all these thoughts can be integrated, in order to bring you clarity for the new day's work according to your bigger goals.

I first came across this concept when I worked through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way". She called it the Morning Pages, where as creatives we need to spend 20-30 minutes each morning writing at least 3 pages. I've gotten many creative ideas while practicing these Morning Pages, and especially now that I'm getting into the habit of blogging weekly, these journals have been a way to track the current themes in my life and my learnings and realizations. In fact, this blog post was birthed from my recent journaling and recorded realizations.


7) Get enough sleep and make sure you end your day such that you maximize those sleeping hours

I'm not going to say what's "enough" sleep, because that's really up to you to figure out what's enough for you. Only you can know how much energy you need for all your tasks so plan your sleep accordingly to make sure you get through each day in the best possible manner. What I do want to stress is the importance of winding down intentionally. Which means scheduling your sleeping hours just like any other appointment or task in your day and sticking to it. Not only that, it’s also about completing your evening such that when you get into bed, it’s really about lying down, closing your eyes and going to sleep and not to continue working on something until you fall asleep.


So there you have it, some of the ways to love yourself daily such that you can get closer to achieving your goals in life! If you have other suggestions on ways to love yourself, feel free to comment below, or send them to me at penguingirlart@gmail.com. Have a great week everyone, and remember to FLY (First Love Yourself)!
 

Ending the Hunt for Flynn Rider (a.k.a. Mr. Right, the One, etc.)

Up until 2010, my favorite Disney princess was Ariel. From the first time I saw “The Little Mermaid” at age 8, all I wanted was to be a mermaid. Then I found myself in November 2010 at the movie theater at Green Hills Mall in Nashville with Mr. G, my new romance at the time, with whom I was already madly in love for almost the entire year. I hadn’t even heard of the movie we were about to see, but it had been his idea, and I could never say no to him. So “Tangled” began, and little did I know Rapunzel's first song would immediately tug at my heartstrings, and I would identify so much with her, even more so than I did with Ariel. These were the very lines: “Stuck in the same place I’ve always been. And I keep wondering, wondering, wondering and wondering WHEN WILL MY LIFE BEGIN?” There I was at age 27, barely minutes into this children’s movie, and I was fighting back my tears and hoping Mr. G hadn’t noticed.

You see, back then, I looked at my life, and it seemed pretty good. I never had to worry about financial difficulties or physical hardship. I’m in good health, I rarely fall sick, and I could eat a whole lot of junk for days and not worry about my weight. I’m musically talented, I write well, I’m got good grades without really putting in much effort, I’m intelligent enough to carry out a conversation of substance with. And I’ve done a few crazy things most of my ex-schoolmates would never dream of - like attempt an acting career in Singapore during a time when the arts scene didn’t quite exist, like packing my bags and flying alone to Nashville without knowing anyone there, like getting the whole study abroad experience.. Really, my life was pretty good and I had no reason to feel otherwise. But if I were to be really honest, deep down inside, for many many years there had always this nagging feeling I’d ignore, a feeling finally brought to my awareness with a simple question Rapunzel sang on my behalf:

WHEN WILL MY LIFE BEGIN?

3 days ago I read for the first time Shel Silverstein’s book “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O”, which begins: “The missing piece sat alone… waiting for someone to come along and take it somewhere.” And as I flipped the pages, I just kept seeing my own life spelled out and illustrated before my very eyes. And that’s when it hit me that in my world, my life only begins when Flynn Rider breaks into my tower and whisks me away. And by living this way, I’ve remained a lonely missing piece waiting and yearning for something or someone to make me whole. Notice that in the movie, Rapunzel was the one who hoisted herself out of the window and down to the grass below, which meant she could have always left whenever she wanted. What she really lacked was the courage to take that first step (because her “mother” had been filling her head with stories of how the world out there was bad, crazy and scary.. but that’s another blog post for another time). Hence Flynn became her way out, her ticket into the great big scary world. Her ticket into adventure.



Flynn Rider was the boy I “clicked with” when we met at a bus stop in Ang Mo Kio 13 years ago. We spent an entire night at Sentosa wandering the beach, singing our favourite songs, and sharing about our lives, falling for each other within days of our first meeting. (Ironically he’s probably the one most like Flynn because he borrowed a lot of money from me and some of his friends and never returned it). Flynn Rider was also the boy in 2009 who led me to the dance floor at a swing dance party during the last night of a Catholic students’ conference in Orlando, Florida, who continued to dance with me despite my clumsy attempts to keep up, the numerous times I trampled on his green shoes, and my nervous laughter because his face was so close to mine and he was damn cute. We sat at opposite ends on a sofa in the hotel lobby and chatted about anything and everything until the sun came up and we left Orlando and he went to Sao Paolo for a semester. He’s the one I met up with in New York and we spent a night wandering the city and the next evening with his crazy uncle who forgot he was supposed to leave for Ecuador and it was a mad rush to get the family packed and to their flight on time. Shortly before we saw “Tangled”, our whirlwind romance began, and he was adventurous and constantly wanted to explore new places, try new things… but he never brought me along. He started his own business at Coney Island, moved to Ecuador for a few months, even went to Fu Zhou to learn Mandarin, and I was never really a part of his adventures. But Flynn Rider showed up again a few months ago as the guy who came to see my first singer-songwriter showcase at an arts cafe in Singapore, who tried to catch the cockroaches we found in my car later that evening, who took a very-petrified me on his motorbike to get cockroach bait from a supermarket nearby at 3 am that same night, who lay beside me on random patch of grass and shared my love for emo songs until the sky lit up. The one who helped me figure out how to ride a bicycle at 1am on the quiet street outside his home. The one who’s lived in various places all over the world, who’s started a few businesses, the freelancer proficient in music, photography, dance - whose every day was different than the one before. These were the prominent Flynn Riders of my life, the ones I fell hard for and couldn’t forget for a while. The others before and in between consisted of some losers, some jerks and some decent guys who got their heart broken in the end… But one thing is for sure - they were all Flynn Riders at the beginning, until they all turned into Eugene Fitzgeralds (some faster than others), and it was time to let them go.

It became clear - I never saw Eugene for Eugene. I only saw Flynn Rider and the perks that came with that. Being whisked away on exciting adventures, having interesting memories to add to the bank of my rather mundane existence, getting close to something dangerous and feeling more alive as a result. Getting to ride on the back of a motorcycle because I don't dare to ride one myself (I can’t even get past my own fear of riding a bicycle!). Getting to be driven around in a fast flashy loud car because I don't know if I dared to race one myself. Getting to visit far away places and explore off-the-beaten paths with someone fearless because I was afraid I’d get lost, or mugged, or killed if I was alone. Because it’s easier and safer to get through a crazy scary world with someone who knows the way, than to figure it all out on my own.

Flynn Rider doesn’t exist. He’s not real (eh.. besides the fact that he’s a fictional character). He’s simply a made up identity to portray a certain image and reputation for Eugene to survive in his world, not very much different from the various personas we put on to get through our day. So waiting for Flynn to whisk me out of my tower, waiting for him to come along and take me somewhere - is all part of a self-created delusion, a fallacy I started to believe a long time ago that my life can only begin when Flynn appears. But history has shown that even when he does, he eventually and inevitably turns into Eugene anyway. And then what? For most of them I simply walk away and let it go. For the three big Flynns of my life, I've put them on a pedestal, waiting for them to become Flynn again, waiting for them to whisk me away, waiting for my life to begin again, waiting and waiting until it finally becomes painfully clear to me that in their eyes I’ve turned into a Eugene, and eventually, I see that they are nothing more than Eugenes too.

We can’t help who we’re attracted to, and my history has proven time and again that I will continue to hunt for Flynn Riders for a pretty long time.. unless something changes in a profound way. It goes to show that the heart of the matter lies not with the Flynn Riders or Eugene Fitzgeralds or Aladdins or Prince Erics or [insert other Disney characters or whatever name pleases you] of the world, but the real issue can only be resolved within ourselves. We get attracted to whatever it is we feel or think we need in order to feel whole and complete and that we’re someone worth loving. So what then needs to change such that I’d no longer need Flynn Riders to qualify my existence? What do I really need to let go of? Who do I need to become such that I wouldn’t need another person to fill the Flynn-shaped hole inside? If there’s one thing I’m finally understanding about self love, it’s about becoming the very thing you feel that you’re missing in your life, like the missing piece lifting and pulling itself and plopping and repeating that over and over again until it shaped itself into something whole and complete on its own.

So WHEN WILL MY LIFE BEGIN?

It begins when I end the hunt for Flynn Rider, and start becoming the equivalent of that for myself. Name pending and suggestions are welcomed.

PenguinGirl learns about self love and loves herself.