In this month’s creative wellbeing workshop, since Valentine’s Day is on the approach, we’re focusing on love. But not the romantic kind. Today, we’re going to fall in love with ourselves.
Before you spend a day celebrating any other humans next week, spend some time celebrating and honouring yourself. Here are a few exercises to help you show yourself some love.
Power Self-portrait
Draw a picture of yourself (this can be as fancy as your drawing confidence will allow - a stick person serves the purpose perfectly adequately if that’s what you want to go for, or you could print out a photo of yourself).
Next to different parts of yourself, write or draw something associated with that area that you like or are proud of about yourself. So, next to your hands you might write about the items that you knit for your friends or draw a picture of the delicious food you make for your family, or you could use collage and stick on a picture of some hands and a notebook to signify your powerful writing. You might draw a heart in roughly the right place and write down the names of the people that you love.
Push yourself to think of as many different elements as you can, and try to use a variety of parts of your body.
Decorate around the image with drawings or collage of things that feel important to your identity (that’s books, the sea and coffee for me!).
When you’re done, reflect on all the skills and good qualities you have, and the beauty of this amazing, varied person that you are.
Love letter
Write a love letter to yourself. Get proper mushy. Write about all the amazing things about yourself that a lover would be enraptured with. Say thank you for all the incredible experiences and opportunities you’ve given yourself. Reminisce about the good times, and look ahead to new adventures you will have in the future.
Achievement scrapbook
Make a collage - or a whole scrapbook - of your achievements. You can use photos of the actual events, or drawings / collage to symbolise what that event or achievement means to you.
You could choose to create a timeline, or you could just throw everything together in a random order. The choice is yours. Put down as many different achievements, no matter how big or small, that you can think of. Then step back and marvel at how much you’ve packed in to a life so far.
Change the story
If you’re finding it hard to celebrate yourself, perhaps because you’ve had a difficult time recently or you’re not feeling great about yourself right now, that’s ok. Forcing yourself to be positive isn’t helpful when it doesn’t ring true. But sometimes it can be helpful to reframe a situation or a story so we can find some light at the end of the tunnel. This exercise will help you do just that!
Start by writing out how you are feeling at the moment, or describing the difficult experiences you have been or are currently going through. Write as much as you can, allowing yourself to explore your emotions and your situation. If it feels intense, take breaks. You might like to have your favourite beverage and snack to hand to make it all feel a bit more enjoyable!
When you’ve finished writing, grab some marker pens and/or paints. Think about a different angle you can find in this story. Maybe things are tough right now, but there’s better possibilities ahead. Or you can be proud of yourself for how you’re getting through this experience, even though it’s tough. If you’ve survived hard things before, you know that you’ll survive this too, and eventually life will get better. How do other people see you right now? They probably see you as far more strong and capable and valuable than you do. To someone out there, you are beautiful and worthy of so much love. Take your markers and paints and blank out some of the words in your story so that the words that are left visible tell about this brighter future, your strength and determination or the positive view that others have of you. Once you’ve done this, you can decorate the blanked out sections in any way you want - paint, pens, collage, whatever you like. Surround your new, more positive story with beauty.
I hope you enjoy working with these exercises! Drop me a comment, or tag me on Notes, to let me know what you thought. And please do share this post so that more people can explore these activities.
Love this! And your stick person has just given me an idea for an activity in a kids yoga class I hope to run soon. Thank you 🙏
Love this Allegra! Self-love is the best love!