Love, it makes the world go round. All you need is love. It’s so simple right?

Actually, maintaining and nurturing loving relationships in our lives can take effort and practice. However, showing your love to others, as well as yourself, can make a huge positive impact on our lives. Love comes in many forms, from our significant others to family, to friends and even pets. 

Feeling loved can harbor a sense of caring, and inspires you to make others in your life feel good. It’s really quite contagious, so here’s our top ways to help you show love to others (and a few to show some love to yourself too).

Listen to others

People have a need to be heard. It makes them feel like what they have to say is worth listening to, and like their voice is important. When you listen to the people you love, you make the other person feel seen and understood, which helps them feel loved and appreciated. 

Keep your promises

Promises you make to the people you love are important, and you tend to go above and beyond to keep promises you make to those you love. Show your love to people you care about by keeping your promises and working hard to show them that they’re a priority for you, and deserving of your time and resources.

Try new things together

Even the most love-filled relationships can benefit from a change in routine, and trying new experiences together is a great way to spice things up and do something exciting with people you love. Doing new things creates excitement, and can take you out of a monotonous routine, letting you discover new things about each other, which can create a feeling of being loved by one another.

Do something useful

One of the simplest ways to show your love for someone, is to do something useful for them. This can be doing something when they are asking for your help, taking this opportunity to be useful and help without complaining or seeing it as an inconvenience. You can also offer your assistance when you haven’t been asked, but your loved ones are struggling and may need your help regardless. 

Keep eye contact when they are talking

When you don’t keep eye contact when someone is sharing something with you, you could be sending the message that what they’re saying isn’t important, and that your attention isn’t fully on them. If someone feels they are not important to you, you become less important to them. Keeping eye contact is an easy way to express that you care about that person and what they have to say.

Ways to show yourself some love

Accept and appreciate yourself

Showing love to yourself always starts with acceptance. If you accept yourself, you’ll be on the way to loving yourself. When you realize that you are enough, and give yourself value it’s a great way to accept yourself and show some love. You don’t need to do anything to give yourself this value - remind yourself that you are enough as is! A good way to do this is to stop comparing yourself to others. This can foster feelings of not being good enough. 

You can also start to appreciate yourself, by thinking about the qualities you admire in yourself, and expressing gratitude for these things. 

Set Boundaries

To have a good relationship with both yourself and others, you need to set boundaries and respect yourself to keep them. Healthy boundaries are a good thing that stop people taking advantage of you, and help you to love yourself by maintaining the level of what is and isn’t okay for you. Don’t be afraid to say no if you mean it, or call people out if they’re crossing a boundary. 

It’s important to give yourself trust to look after your own best interests, and this means not sacrificing your own needs for the needs of others around you. Prioritize the commitments you make for yourself, and enforce your boundaries in a healthy way.

This can also mean to set some boundaries in order to have some quality time to yourself. Time and space to yourself is a simple way to show love to yourself - take some time to enjoy the things that really feel good to you.

Communicate with yourself

Take time to check in with yourself and listen to what you really want and need. You can’t give yourself the things you need if you don’t know what they actually are. Stop and think about what it is YOU really want, without thinking about other people ahead of yourself. Speak to yourself in a loving way, and listen to the answers that come up.

Meet your own needs

Once you know what your own needs are, it's important to meet them, and not disregard them. You must make sure your needs get met in order to show love to yourself, whether that's more time to yourself, a secure job, a holiday. Think about the ways you can give yourself what you need.

Be kind to yourself

Finally, make sure you’re kind to yourself. Treat yourself with compassion and appreciate the ways you show love to yourself. Kindness is one of the ways to show love - so be kind to yourself every day!

By Amy Cavill

Show some love to yourself and others by practicing these partner yoga classes from your own home, right now!

BFF Yoga with Michelle Marchildon

Partner Restorative Yoga with Kristen Boyle