Loving yourself is the most important thing, and I am not referring to selfies and other excessive pictures that are inundating every social media channels. What I am describing here, is a deeper love, an unconditional love, self-love. However, such love is hard to cultivate because it holds you accountable, forces you to analyze yourself and demands you to change. It's a long process that requires, constant caring, dedication and patience; and the process is far from being easy. Here are ways you can start loving yourself better.

1. Be naked

There's nothing more freeing than loving the body you were given. Why is it freeing? Because the relationship you have with your body will be the longest relationship you'll ever have. So, you owe it to yourself to learn how to love it and that starts by changing the way you view it. Try this:

Next time you take a shower, hold off on getting dressed right away. Instead, once you're all dried up, get rid of that towel and face the mirror. Explore your body and give yourself compliments. Do that every day and see if it changes anything.

2. Treat yourself as you would your best friend

You always offer words of kindness and encouragement to your friends when they need it the most. So, why not offer the same courtesy to yourself? I mean, would you ever dare say to a friend some of the things you think about yourself? Of course not! So, talk to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend. No negativity, please!

3. Don't let people dictate your mood

Let's talk about power: the power you give people when you allow them to affect your mood. Maybe you were wrongfully accused by your boss, your friend was extremely passive aggressive the other night, or maybe it's something else. That infuriates you, and rightfully so but still the choice is always yours to make. At the end of the day, you decided to let someone affect you.

Kindly reminder: You have more power than you think

4. Have a "me" day

We work every day from 9-5, even longer hours sometimes. Yet we find it hard to devote time to yourself. We forget that it is important to have a healthy balance between play time and work time. So, give yourself an entire day where your main focus is you.

5. Tackle your insecurities

At some point, running away from things is just not an option anymore. There's always something about ourselves that we don't particularly like for whatever reason. Some people camouflage their insecurities through jokes, sarcasm, by taking care of anyone else but themselves and various other ways. But as we are advancing in age all of that gets extremely exhausting and avoiding it seems to be more work than facing things head on.

6. Forgive others

For years, you have held on to that negative experience with one of your family member or was it a friend, a lover or a teacher that made you feel so bad, lower than you ever felt in your life before. Those experiences have been horrible for you but make sure to forgive whoever hurt you. Let go of that burden instead of reliving it every day.

7. Stop being your own abuser

Have you ever wondered why an individual can treat someone poorly but somebody else like gold? Do you find yourself always treated poorly by people? First, there's never a good enough reason to treat anyone that way. Second, sometimes you have to realize that you, yourself, give permission to others to treat you the way you are being treated. If you don't like it, say something. Ask a good friend, someone you really trust for advice, change some of your ways and from now on demand to be treated the way you believe you deserve.

8. Be yourself at all time

Enough said!

9. Let go of past experiences

Don't let your past dictate your future. Appreciate your experiences and what you have overcome. Of course, you'll never forget them and you shouldn't because with every experience a lesson has been taught. But you owe it to your life, moving forward, to let it go!

10. Don't let anyone put you in a box.

Don't let people define you. You are ever changing and a complex human being who cannot be oversimplified by being confined to a category, a stereotype, a status quo or anything of that sort.

11. Stop the competition

Don't get caught up in the competition vortex. Keeping up with that one-upper friend or anyone in your life who feel that they are in competition with you, literally 24/7 is exhausting and childish. The only person you should be competing with is yourself.