Valentine’s Day is here and love is in the air. Restaurants are packed with couples ready to celebrate each other. Gift shops are counting the cash spent on satisfying the love language of gifts. Romcoms are on every channel you flip through. So, what’s missing?
For many, an outlet for their love is missing. Valentine’s Day can be tough for those who are alone and don’t feel like they have someone else to love. We’re here to tell you: you don’t have to look any further than yourself to find someone to love. This Valentine’s Day, we should all celebrate self-love. Here’s how you can do just that.
Catching the Automatic Negative Thoughts
Automatic Negative Thoughts are often referred to as “ANTs.” The “ANTs Exercise” is the practice of catching those negative thoughts and ridding yourself of them.
ANTs are essentially anything you tell yourself as an automatic negative response to a situation, oftentimes without a legitimate reason. You might be sitting with friends and trying to tell a story but get cut off and think “none of my friends like me.” Or, you have been struggling to eat right and think “I’m never going to be healthy.”
These are Automatic Negative Thoughts that hinder your ability to grow as a person because you are telling yourself the worst possible reality is true. You are thinking in absolutes by saying you are NEVER going to be healthy. You are forcing thoughts into your friends’ minds by saying none of them like you.
Thoughts are electric impulses that we can reframe and balance out the negative with the neutral or the positive. “I’m not eating healthy today, but I will make the healthy choice tomorrow.” “It feels like my friends aren’t listening, but they wouldn’t have invited me if they didn’t want me to be here.”
Stop Lying To Yourself
This falls hand-in-hand with the ANTs exercise. So many of our negative thoughts are lies we have told ourselves so many times that they have become our truth. They might not be true to anyone around us, but they are certainly true in our own minds. Thoughts create behaviors and it’s your behaviors that create the problems.
When you alter your thinking and create a new electric channel for your thoughts to follow, you create a new reality for yourself. You need to start questioning your own thoughts. Is what you are telling yourself true or is it just convenient?
This does not mean you need affirmations to get through your day. You do not need to force positive lies, either. Maybe you do need to make healthier choices at dinner, but you can’t eat a candy bar and say “I am a healthy eater.” Tell yourself the truth while understanding you have time to make what’s wrong right.
Eating Right
A lot of people reach for a pint of ice cream and hop on the couch on a sad day. This comforting experience is familiar to many, but eating unhealthy foods only provides temporary boosts in our journey of personal growth. Those temporary boosts come with an inevitable crash.
Opting to eat healthy even when you are having a rough day will leave you feeling better and more energized, and build a pathway to healthier choices down the line. Our habits are often built in our lowest moments.
Stick To It!
Healthy habits don’t form overnight. It is often said that it takes 22 days to form a habit (some studies suggest that number is much higher). When you make healthy choices, you should stay on that path for at least that long before considering giving it up. You might find that by the end of those 22 days, you enjoy the newly-formed habits and have made a personal transition to healthier choices.
At Integrated Therapies, we believe one of the very first tasks in self-improvement is to love ourselves. We wish to be treated in a certain way, so why would we treat ourselves any other way? We are here when you are ready to make this transition and love yourself.