This month, we’re exploring the theme of Self-Love on the blog. Today is the first creativity post within this theme, and we’re going to start off simply with a few writing prompts to get you thinking about how you can understand your approach to self-love and what makes you feel good about yourself.

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1. List five things you like about yourself.

The ideas you come up with don’t have to be huge ideas. They can be something small, such as “I think I’m kind”.

It’s often helpful to support these ideas with evidence; try coming up with an example that supports your understanding of yourself.

If you aren’t sure of where to start, try thinking of things you enjoy doing, or even little things you’ve done this past week. From this, you can extrapolate statements about yourself. For some simple examples, have a look at the table below:

Thing I Enjoy/I’ve Done	Inference
I like painting.	I’m creative.
I like to read about different topics.	I’m inquisitive.
I made my friend laugh.	I’m funny.

2. Create a mindmap related to the term “self-love”.

Explore what the term “self-love” encompasses by writing down the things it makes you think of. You could consider:

• What actions self-love might involve.
• What feelings it might evoke.
• Why you want to achieve it.
• Synonyms for self-love.

3. Describe a time when you felt great about yourself.

Recognising times where we’ve felt confident or good about ourselves can be incredibly helpful in understanding our needs.

If you’re not sure on how to start responding to this prompt, try considering:

• What happened.
• Who you were with.
• The exact emotions you felt.
• The physical sensations in your body.

4. When was the last time you received a compliment?

When we think of the positive things people tell us, we can learn a lot about how we’re perceived by others. How we respond to this can also help us understand our values and how we view ourselves.

To break down this prompt further, you may want to consider using these questions:

• What was the compliment?
• Who was it from?
• How did it make you feel?
• Why do you think the person gave you this compliment?

5. Who was the last person who taught you something about yourself?

Sometimes it takes interacting with other people to learn something about ourselves. Sometimes these can be big lessons; other times, it can be something about our likes or dislikes. Even if we consider relationships that ended badly, they can often teach us about how we need to be loved.

These experiences can be negative or positive, but they’ll always be telling.

Consider the following questions to help you develop your response:

• Who were they?
• What did they teach you?
• Was this a positive or negative experience?
• How did this lesson about yourself feel?

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I hope you find these starting prompts useful in your self-love journey! I have taken them as an excerpt from my ’31 Days of Self-Love’ workbook, now available as a digital download over on Etsy.

I have several reflective eBooks available via Ko-Fi and Etsy for digital download, with a new one being released each month and linking to the monthly blog themes 🙂

If you’re comfortable sharing your answers, I’d love to hear the things you like about yourself in the comments. You could also join me on Facebook or Instagram; I regularly post self-care content over there!