Chocolates, flowers, candy hearts - these are the images that often come to mind when Valentine’s Day arrives each February. Although it can be a fun day filled with sweets and expressions of love and affection, Valentine’s Day can also trigger anxiety for many of us. For those who have loved ones to celebrate with, expectations around gifts and grand romantic gestures can become overwhelming and even lead to disappointment. Those of us who spend the holiday alone may feel bombarded by reminders of their relationship status or of painful memories of those they have lost and still grieving. Regardless of how you spend Valentine’s Day, the day can serve as a great reminder that one of the most important relationships we will have in life is the one we have with ourselves. To combat the negative emotions the holiday can invoke, we can instead use the day to practice self-love.

What is Self-love?

One University of Arizona study defines self-love as having three essential components:

Self-kindness - treating yourself with understanding and forgiveness
Recognition of one’s place in our shared humanity. This includes understanding that no one is perfect and that personal experiences are part of the larger human experience.
Mindfulness - having emotional balance and avoiding being overwhelmed by painful feelings

Practicing Self-love

So how can you take the first steps toward practicing self-love and self-compassion today? As part of our Project Resilience social emotional learning (SEL) lessons for elementary and middle school students, our resilience consultants start by encouraging students to identify their own character strengths:

“Character strengths are the positive parts of your personality and are the keys to being your best self. Even if it’s challenging, identifying your own strengths is an important first step in building resilience.”
- from our Project Resilience SEL Journals

What are you most proud of about yourself? Is it the fact that you are a team player, or maybe that you are great at appreciating others? Is it your persistence? Your sense of humor? Take a moment to be proud of your top character strengths, and recognize that it’s okay if you have not mastered them all. As our Resilience Consultants share with students, “we each have ALL of these character strengths, but some we are really good at and others we are working on.”