Love yourself if you want to be a happy, fulfilled, confident, effective person, able to give and receive love, have self-esteem and a good sense of your self-worth. But it’s one thing to understand this intellectually and quite another to really know and believe it. One of the best ways to accelerate a self-love habit is through using self-love rituals. Practicing self-love rituals is an easy enjoyable way to implant and build your self-love habit and behaviour until it becomes natural. Today we look at 11 self-love rituals to get you started, but first what’s so special about rituals? What are rituals and why are they so powerful? A ritual involves a series of actions, sometimes in a prescribed order – which are a type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone – in this case you! Because that’s what we’re after isn’t it – a way of behaving you do regularly and invariably, habitually and consistently.  That’s why developing rituals is powerful, because rather than leaving it to randomness and chance or how we’re feeling on a particular day, by creating rituals we build them into our life and are more likely to do them. Once you’ve created the ritual you don’t have to think about it – it’s part of a system. It’s internalised. Rituals will supercharge your habits and are better than habits in some ways. You can encompass more than one habit within a ritual and because rituals focus on specific ways of doing something, they are very focused. Apart from building the habit, the other great thing about using rituals is that by following a set way of doing something you’re creating space and time in your life for it.  Just doing these rituals will send your brain the message that this is important to you – you matter. These rituals we’re talking about of themselves nothing out of the ordinary. You might think that’s not a ritual that’s just how I’m spending my evening. Great if that’s the case – but by virtue of thinking of it as a ritual and labelling it as a ritual – it makes it a thing. It raises it up out of the everyday and mundane and it becomes something more.  It becomes that thing that you do, and what’s more you’re doing it with intention. ‘You’ time Most of these self-love rituals fall into the category of how to spend ‘you’ time.  This is time you put aside where you focus on yourself. Scheduling ‘you’ time is one of the key self-love habits. These rituals are a great way to help you do this. How you interpret them and make them your own will depend on your lifestyle, situation and preferences, but we’ve included a few suggestions to give you the idea. 11 Self-love rituals Relaxing or pamper time Spa Proper moisturise and self massage Brush your skin Take a long bath or shower Nurture / nourish time Self-development Visit a museum Watch a documentary, Joy time This will mean many different things to different people. It doesn’t really matter what it is – what matters is that you make a ritual and habit of scheduling time to do something that gives or brings you joy. Something just on your own or with others. Volunteering Get in the zone writing a novel or book A hobby like painting, sketching, or a sport Even better if it’s something you’re good at so you’re building your self-esteem at the same time. Go for a walk in the country or around the city Go to see a great film, show or play Schedule it to make it a ritual. It doesn’t have to be the same thing every day or for the same amount of time every day. Make a ritual of asking yourself – what am I doing today that it going to bring me joy. Laugh time Read a funny book or cartoon Watch comedy TV program or film Go to a comedy club Listen to a funny podcast The power of laughter is immense.  You’re telling yourself you deserve to laugh – y