Self-Love and How to Be Your Own Valentine
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching it’s nearly impossible not to feel completely inundated with images of doting couples. If you’re one of the millions who find themselves in a happy and loving relationship, the holiday likely leaves you with all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings. However, if you’re instead one of the millions that doesn’t happen to fall into that category this year, or any year, you might be feeling left out in the cold with a great deal of ambivalence or worse, resentment, towards the holiday. I know I certainly did for the first 18 years of my life when I scarcely received valentines from my classmates, let alone from my crushes!
As each year passes, I realize more and more how important it is to remove any expectations I have for the day and to find ways to be, for lack of a better term, my own Valentine. I’ve found the best way to do this, not only in February but throughout the entire year, is to find ways to practice self-love in my daily life.
The term “self-love” is rather all-encompassing and means something different to each and every one of us. Broadly speaking, I view self-love not as being overly and selfishly wrapped up in feeding one’s ego like some are inclined to think, but instead as being focused on seeking out ways to nurture and care for oneself as a means for encouraging health and personal growth. In my own life, I have found that the best way to infuse a little self-love into my day to day is by treating myself to something special, kind and unexpected.
Treating yourself, by very definition, is a bit like choosing your own adventure. No two of us are exactly alike, therefore no two of us have the same definition for what taking special care of ourselves means. Today I’m not only sharing four of my favorite ways to treat myself and encourage self-love but also a special discount code to help all of you smile brighter in the year ahead!
Five Things to Do in Venice (Beyond Historical Sites and Museums)
Prior to visiting Venice for the first time, I had a very specific vision of what I would do when I finally set foot in the magical city. It all essentially revolved around Piazza San Marco and the Doge’s Palace with maybe a side of the Guggenheim thrown in if I found myself with time to spare. Needless to say, I massively underestimated all of the city’s diverse offerings. To ensure that you enter into any future trip to to the floating city from a more informed perspective than I did, I put together a list of five things to do in Venice (beyond historical sites and museums) to help guide your future travels.
January in Review
Upon returning home from Europe, my husband and I were hit by jetlag surprisingly hard and it took us a few weeks to get back to functioning at full capacity. This peek into my January therefore is really only a look at the two and a half weeks of the month we were somewhat recovered and out and about during. Jet lag or not, I’m quite pleased with how much fun we managed to cram into a relatively short period of time!
Gratitude in January
It seems like a telling sign that I’m sitting here writing this gratitude post completely astounded that January is almost over. It is already feeling like 2017 is going to fly by at record speed in much of the same way that 2016 did, so let’s take a few moments to slow down and reflect on how these first few weeks of the year have gone, shall we?
Now, before I begin discussing the positive things that this month has brought into my life, I do want to address my somewhat sporadic blogging schedule this month. Upon returning home from Venice and London I found that I really needed some quiet time to decompress. You can read more about why I needed to take a temporary step back here, but long story short I had a bit of a rough start to the year and needed to do a hard reset on life. I really appreciate all of your patience and support while I worked through some things and am excited to get back to a more regular blogging schedule going forward.
