"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we'll ever do." —Brené Brown

September is here, and so is our yearly reminder of self-care. Being the self-care awareness month, September holds a special place in my calendar as I love to take on self-care challenges in September.

This year, I am embarking on the month-long self-care challenge starting with self-love; because I believe self-love is the first step in our self-care journey.

When I came to know about self-care awareness month, I was amazed to see that we have an entire month dedicated to self-care challenges that help us improve our overall well-being.

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In 2021, I started taking self-care challenges in September. Last year, I made a 30-day calendar with tiny mindful activities as a part of my month-long self-care challenge.

But this year I have a different plan for the challenge. For the last few weeks, I am feeling a lack of motivation to work on myself. After the office work, I am spending time lazily watching cooking videos (none of them I have tried yet, wink wink) and playing childish games.

Although I appreciate spending leisure time doing nothing, I have become so lazy that I am procrastinating to take care of myself. Therefore, I am planning to nurture self-love as a part of my self-care challenge this September.

Self-love is essential for self-care:

I have been there where people hate themselves. I have suffered from low self-esteem for a long; hating, cursing, and blaming myself for every negative thing that happened in my life. That’s why now I am more inclined to love myself for every beautiful thing in my life, every accomplishment I have established, and every time I came back to light.

Self-love is a savior:

If I had not turned myself toward the light, I would have left in the dark tunnel forever. 

It was self-love that helped me recognize the true meaning of life and introduced me to a new version of myself.

At that moment I realized that without self-love, you can’t survive this world. It is obvious to feel claustrophobic, choked, and breathless when you suffer from low self-esteem. Gradually, you start losing your confidence in your ability and awakening your inner critic to doubt everything in life.

But when you stop asking questions about your existence, doubting your identity, and finding your purpose of being, you will see the daybreak of self-love.

Why it’s daybreak? Because when you stop investing time in unnecessary things that feel like a burden to your mind, you will see how easy is to love yourself, and you don’t need anyone to teach you to do that. 

When you start practicing self-love, it will bring you a new self of you, removing the darkness of ignorance that was stopping you to love yourself.

My plan for the self-care challenge in 2022:

As I told you earlier, I am planning to keep ‘Self-love’ as the theme of my self-care challenge in 2022. Therefore, I am making the self-care challenge calendar keeping in mind self-love activities that are easy and simple to practice for the entire month.

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Additionally, this year I am not planning the daily activities; instead, I am planning to aim for a three-day goal to achieve. This way, I will have ten activities in September, each activity taking three days to fulfill my self-love quest.

A glimpse of the self-love activities in my self-care calendar:

Day 1 to Day 3: Rekindle self-love by accepting yourself  

Day 4 to Day 6: Reconnect to yourself 

Day 7 to Day 9: Restart a good habit 

Day 10 to Day 12: Reread the books you love

Day 13 to Day 15: Rename your emotions

Day 16 to Day 18: Rewrite the reasons why you appreciate yourself

Day 19 to Day 21: Rejuvenate your inner child

Day 22 to Day 24: Redefine your goals

Day 25 to Day 27: Rebuild your dreams

Day 28 to Day 30: Renew yourself

Concluding Thoughts:

Amidst the daily hustle, you find little time for self-care. In fact, most of the time you forget to include self-care in your daily routine. However, before practicing self-care, you need to cultivate self-love.

Because when you start loving yourself, only then, you will rediscover hundreds of reasons to fall in love with yourself. 

So, how are you going to celebrate self-love this September? I am eager to know. Leave your comments below.

(This content is copyrighted by Swarnali Nath and by no means to use for any purpose without the writer’s prior permission.)