5 Daily Self Love Habits To Start In 2024 (+ Action Plan)

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So you are looking to implement some daily self love habits but don’t know where to start? These are the 5 self love habits that changed my life.

Everyone just keeps talking about how important this self love is.

But how exactly do I practice my self love? What are the precise steps I have to take?

In this post, I will tell you about self love habits that improved my life tremendously and will tell you exactly HOW and where to start.

This post is all about daily self love habits.

📣 How this action plan works

When I look something up on the Internet I pretty often find a bunch of vague articles that give me a lot of inspirational speech but nothing specific.

And after reading I am just motivated as hell… but have no idea what to do about it.

Sooo… I assumed I might not be the only one, and I tried my bestest to make this journey smooth and easy for you.

There are some things I included in this post to make it as helpful as possible.

Here they are:

❗️ Read this before starting

1. For each practice, you will see two characteristics: time needed per day and minimum requirements.

Time needed per day will show you exactly how much time you’re going to need each day and will help you find a better time slot for a specific habit.

Depending on what time of the day is busier or more productive for you, you can choose whenever it’s the best time to practice a habit.

(It’s also cool to see that how little time it’s going to take you every day to make a huge difference in your life!)

Minimum requirements mean exactly what it sounds like: it’s what you need to get started right now.

2. The habits are sorted in ascending order — from low to high difficulty (from my experience).

So, the easiest way to start working on them is to start from the first one and go down the list.

3. If you are not used to this kind of habits, I highly recommend working on one habit at a time.

Start with just the first one, and build on it for the first 1-2 weeks.

Then when you feel like you don’t need too much effort to keep maintaining it, add the next habit on the list to your daily routine.

RELATED POST: 3 Negative Effects Of Self Love (You’ll Be Surprised)

💕 Daily Self Love Habits

Finally, we are getting straight to action!

But before we begin, I would like to emphasize one more small (but very crucial) detail…

❗️ One more extremely important thing

To the minimum requirements of each habit, you are always going to add one more: discipline.

The ONLY way to build a habit is to make your actions consistent.

At times, especially when nothing seems to be happening to you, it might be pretty tough to keep going. But you have to know that those moments are usually the ones before the breakthrough.

Don’t quit. Keep pushing. Try to not think about the result — try to enjoy whatever habit you are working on as much as you can.

If you are not enjoying it at all — change it up a little bit so that it’s more personal and brings you more pleasure.

The major key to success — whatever success we are talking about — is consistency in all the little steps you are taking.

Now, let’s start with the most feasible one…

1. Start doing guided meditations daily

Time needed per day: 5 minutes
Minimum requirements: phone + app or YouTube (see my favorites below)

I know you heard it millions of times before but it really WORKS.

(And it requires literally nothing but five minutes to start.)

I don’t remember who said this… but we, as human beings, practice our feelings.

When we get pulled into negative thoughts or emotions, whatever they are based on — envy, anger, fear, etc., we are practicing negativity and training our negativity “muscles”.

What happens as a result? Those “muscles” become our strongest ones. They are the ones we feel most comfortable using.

Guided meditations and meditations with affirmations train your positivity “muscles”.

No matter what kind of emotion a meditation is focused on, it brings you a powerful connection with yourself because it teaches you to view yourself and the world in a positive, abundant way. Meditation also calms anxiety and brings peacefulness.

The best time for meditation is right after waking up or right before going to sleep when your mind is relaxed and perceptive. You can also meditate any time during the day — to take a break and get out of your head.

These are three sources that I find best for guided meditations:

Simple Habit — App for iOS & Android

Insight Timer — App for iOS & Android

Enhanced – Guided Meditation — YouTube Channel

Look for guided meditations or affirmation meditations for self love, abundance, forgiveness, intuition, confidence, etc. — whatever feels more needed to feel self loved at the moment.

2. Start journaling daily

Time needed per day: 15 minutes
Minimum requirements: journal + pen, note-taking app, or a document on your computer

Journaling is my second go-to and a habit I swear by.

It’s one of the easiest and most helpful daily self love habits.

I have been journaling since I was a kid (without realizing it) so it’s something that came to me naturally.

But the good part is that you don’t need any skills or experience. You can start at any point.

I actually have this one covered for you. Try my Detailed Self Love Journal Challenge that I put together specifically for this purpose: help you start the journey of self love.

Read the instructions and start with one prompt per day. Follow the exact order of the prompts because it’s there for a reason. 😉

If you finished the challenge and would like to explore yourself even deeper, try my 41 Journaling Prompts For Creatives. They are divided into sections so you could choose whichever you would like to focus on better.

Another thing I would recommend doing on top of the above is your daily journal.

It’s a prompt that you are going to do every day, and it stays the same.

You can create your own prompt, or use mine. I journal before bed so I called this prompt Nightly Journal.

Here it is:

• 3 things I am grateful for today
• 3 achievements today (even the smallest ones like “finally decluttered the closet”)
• 1 thing I am proud of today
• 1 thing I am excited about

Nightly Journal will help you practice gratitude and self acceptance. And make more excited for a new day!

This whole daily journal routine won’t take you more than 15 minutes. But you are welcome to increase the time if you feel like it — even better!

3. Get your body moving

Time needed per day: 10 minutes – 30 minutes depending on the level
Minimum requirements: sportswear

It’s a proven scientific fact that a workout of any kind reduces anxiety and depression. By being physically active you feed your brain with valuable nutrients and oxygen that bring you more focus and energy.

And even more: it boosts your self-confidence, and therefore, allows you to develop stronger self love.

And yes, it didn’t sound very convincing to me too…

But then I figured that it can’t be that every successful, balanced person talks about this if it has no value.

It might be an easy one for you to manage or it can be one of the hardest habits to start (but still pretty easy to maintain). If you are not used to regular physical activity you might struggle with getting into a habit of it.

But I do have some tips.

What helped me A LOT:

1. STARTING WITH JUST 10 MINUTES PER DAY

10 minutes doesn’t sound that scary. So you will struggle less with forcing yourself to do it.

You can increase the workout length over time but do not rush with this step.

You have to be absolutely ready and confident that increasing time won’t make you quit.

2. STARTING WITH WORKOUTS I ENJOYED MOST OF ALL

Choose a workout that is less unpleasant than the others.

I started with P4P workout videos on YouTube.

They are not a common choice but I like that there is no yelling and cheering up (that usually distracts me) and that they have different levels of the same workout. You can also choose the “no music” edition and play your own music or listen to a podcast while working out.

Some other great first-getting-into-workout-habit options:

3. DOING IT FIRST THING IN THE MORNING TO GET IT OVER WITH

Trust me, it’s much better than thinking the whole day about what’s waiting for you. Or giving up because you are tired at the end of a long day.

And by the way, you might still have to push through it at first.

But it won’t feel right to skip this short active morning routine once you get used to it.

4. Take charge of your world (with small steps)

Time needed per day: 10-30 minutes
Minimum requirements: none

This is a MAJOR one and a hard one too.

Your world and surroundings have a great influence on how you feel about yourself.

Very often we don’t realize how many triggers are constantly around us, affecting our mood and well-being. We are sometimes trapped in unhealthy behavioral patterns that we repeat every day, and we would love to get out… if only we realized that.

So when I say your world, I mean all parts of it:

• Your environment — your home, people who surround you, workplace, etc.
• Your everyday processes — work, communication, self care, etc.
• Your inner world (we’ll talk about this one in the next section)

So how can you take charge of your world and the way it affects you?

Control what you are taking in.

I have some ideas:

1. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HOME/WORKPLACE

Do a quick tidy-up every day to keep your space uncluttered. If you are a visual person, but some beautiful decor so that you enjoy being in your home.

Make your home a space where you are calm and your mind is clear.

Do the same for your workplace.

2. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME ON WRONG PEOPLE

By wrong people I mean toxic, manipulative, narcissistic, or just simply people who are not trying to become their better version. Also, the people you have outgrown.

Those are always dragging themselves down and will take you with them.

Slowly reduce your interaction with this group of people, and use that saved time to work on your goals instead.

3. “INFORMATION HYGIENE”

It’s something that I once heard from my ex-boss.

Information hygiene is choosing properly what kind of information you consume. Simply because there is too much information, and a huge part of it is trash.

Use less social media.

Read books and watch movies that educate you rather than clog your brain.

Don’t gossip.

The overall point here is: do not spread your energy and attention more than needed because it’s a distraction from yourself and your own plans.

Actively choose your environment to be the way you need it to be every time you have to make a decision in that aspect.

5. Master a healthy relationship with yourself

Time needed per day: all day long in “passive” mode
Minimum requirements: none

Finally, we made it to the final habit of the list, and the hardest one.

I’ll be honest, practicing this one might take a looong time. Sometimes even your whole life (oops).

But it’s SO worth it because it’s the most important one out of all the daily self love habits.

This part includes so many various things. Some of them are:

I don’t know if it would be the right statement from the perspective of science or psychology, but I see all these different parts as elements of one huge thing that we have to work on: self talk.

This topic is so huge that I would need 1000 posts like this one to fully cover all the aspects.

But there is one trick you can start doing right now to get going. I learned it from my therapist.

So every time you catch yourself:

• self criticizing,
• beating yourself up for mistakes,
• comparing yourself to others,
• overthinking,
• going over and over your fears,

…Consciously stop — literally envision a stop sign in your head or say stop out loud or in your head — and then replace the negative thought with a more realistic, kind and self-compassionate thought.

For example:

So how to notice those negative thoughts? Your body will give you the answer.

Those harmful obsessive thoughts make you sad, anxious and angry, and you will physically feel it in some way — tightness in your chest, stomachache, headache, nausea, or something else.

Observe your sensations and find out your own body’s reaction.

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This post was all about daily self love habits.