How to Practice Self-love
Featuring: Brittny King
Interview & video by: Catie Menke
Copy by: Shannon Holt
Self-love is so much more than just a state of feeling good. It’s about accepting ourselves, being mindful of ourselves and truly knowing ourselves. It is not something that comes easy for most, but it is something we should all be practicing and striving for on a daily basis.
In this episode of Brunch with Catie Menke, Catie sat down with Brittny King, a lifestyle and wellness coach with an emphasis on self-love, to talk about how we can better incorporate self-love into our daily routines with just a few simple practices.
Art Direction by: Catie Menke. Photograph by: Shannon Holt. Location: Biltmore Fashion Park.
Say “no” when you mean no and “yes” when you mean yes
We all have a lot on our plates and we want to believe we can do it all. Whether we are doing it out of nicety or because we feel obligated, we often say “yes” to things we don’t really want to do. As King puts it, “when you say yes to other people, most of the time, you are saying no to yourself.”
In order to really cultivate self-love, we need to learn to listen to ourselves and please ourselves rather than pleasing everyone else. King says it best when she says “if it isn’t a “hell yes” then it is a “hell no.”
Develop a solid night and morning routine
“The only hours of your day that you have complete control over is the last hour of your day and the first hour of your day.” King believes those hours, the ones you have complete control over, are the hours you should be doing activities that make you feel your best.
Instead of spending time on Instagram, endlessly scrolling and stimulating your mind with images of what other people are doing, take the time to meditate, journal or read. Spending time with yourself, without external distractions, will help you to be more mindful of who you really are and what you truly want/need.
Let go of comparison
Being so connected to everyone and everything can leave us feeling disconnected from ourselves. We are constantly looking at how other people are living their lives and how they are spending their days, that we can often feel like we aren’t doing enough or even that we aren’t enough.
King recommends doing a social media clean-up, “if you notice that you are comparing yourself to someone often, and it makes you feel bad, you can hide them.” Once you learn to love yourself, you will find yourself comparing less and less. So take some time away from the people you find you are comparing yourself to and put that energy into loving yourself.
Don’t always believe the first thought you have about yourself
Negative self-talk can be the hardest thing to combat when trying to cultivate a strong sense of self-love. As humans, we are incredibly hard on ourselves and find it much easier to talk to ourselves in a negative way rather than a positive, uplifting way.
If you find yourself having negative thoughts about yourself, take a cue from King, “a lot of times I will ask myself why I am having a thought and usually it means something else is going on. I then replace that negative thought with a positive, more productive thought.”
This definitely isn’t the easiest part of practicing self-love, but it will be one that has the biggest impact. Learning to talk to ourselves and see ourselves in a more positive way will only allow us to love ourselves more.
Develop and attitude of gratitude for yourself
When it comes to gratitude we are often taught to be grateful and thankful for the people, places and things within our lives, but what about shifting that gratitude a little more towards ourselves?
“To me, self-love is self-acceptance and practicing gratitude helps you accept where you are,” says King. The next time you are writing down the things you are grateful for, King recommends taking the time to write down something about yourself as well. “A lot of the times with self-love it’s about not being enough, with a gratitude practice it allows you to see what you are rather than what you are not.”
Follow Brittny at
Website: brittnyking.com
Instagram: @brittnyking_
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