Listen, I get it. Sometimes life throws a lot of lemons and we're too depleted to make lemonade (or maybe we've run out of sugar). We make mistakes, we become our toughest critics, and we feel unlovable to other people, much less lovable to ourselves.

It sounds super cheesy, but frankly, self-love is the ultimate healing energy. When you truly love yourself, you can heal yourself (both mentally and physically). Self-love is not only important because American Girl's The Care and Keeping of You told us it is when we were 12-years-old, or because "self-care" is a buzzword. Self-love is important because it's the superpower that allows us to become our highest selves, live out our purpose, and–oh yeah–achieve peak happiness (but like NBD, right).

While many people spend their lives on a self-love quest, it isn't all that complicated. You don't need to be as perfect as Beyoncé in order to truly feel it, or go on some Eat, Pray, Love adventure in order to find it. Just like anything else, self-love is about taking action, specifically in three different ways: physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The Physical Layer

"Self-care" is most commonly understood from the physical layer; taking a bath, doing a face mask, eating vegetables, and getting enough sleep. While this layer is only one piece of the puzzle, it's just as important to tend to your body and physical self in order to achieve self-love. Of course puppies are all cute, but you fall in love with the puppy that you feed, walk, and take care of everyday. Feeling responsibility for and truly taking care of your body will help you love it–it's human nature.

How to Love Yourself Physically:

Have a healthy balance of rest, play, and work that fulfills you.
Eat intuitively: appreciate your food, stop before you're too full, nourish your body with the best, and never deprive yourself.
Prioritize sleep.
Drink plenty of water, but make it feel luxurious: add mint, lemon, or berries.
Move more often than you sit still.
Honor cravings; drink water when you're hungry and thirsty, eat dark chocolate when your sweet tooth strikes, and make a curry or plant-based pizza when you want something heavy.
Track your period with the MyFlo app and treat the different phases in your cycle accordingly. Knowledge is self-love too.
Wear the outfits that are just so you, or put on your favorite shade of lipstick for no other reason than to sit at home and sip a glass of champagne by yourself. What we choose to put on our bodies can also be a tool to love ourselves more radically.

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The Emotional Layer

Think of the emotional layer like a movie; we feel very different emotions whether we're watching a comedy or a horror movie. The movie companies utilize effects to tell us how we're supposed to feel, like playing a love song to let us know we want the boy and girl to fall in love, or eery, scary music that lets us know a serial killer might pop out. Just imagine the Jaws theme during a romantic montage–it would evoke very different emotions than a Hall & Oates song. Your life is like a movie, and your emotions are the songs that affect the way you see it. Working on the emotional layer can help you stop seeing your life as a drama and instead start enjoying the movie for the lighthearted comedy that it is.

How to Love Yourself Emotionally:

Stop judging: whether it's yourself, your coworkers, your family, or influencers on Instagram, just stop.
Be actively lovable. You won't accumulate self-love just by waiting for it to happen. Practice radical kindness, and become the kindest person you know. Follow your passions unapologetically, and spend your free time doing something you'd be proud of. If you feel unlovable, simply prove to yourself that you're not.
Know that happiness is a skill, not a circumstance. That means self-love is a muscle that must actively be worked, not something that happens once you look a certain way or achieve a certain milestone.
Forgive your mistakes like you would your little sister's (and remember that true self-love is unconditional).
Laugh at least five times, every single day.

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The Spiritual Layer

It's difficult to love ourselves when we lack purpose, or we have the wrong purpose. By no means do you have to be part of an organized religion in order to love yourself (that's a whole other article for another day), but you should have personalized practices and rituals that get you out of your physical body and into your spiritual self in order to find and feel true purpose. After all, a lack of self-love happens when we are not who we are meant to be. In order to achieve self-love, we must actively work on becoming our truest selves.

How to Love Yourself Spiritually:

Meditate every day. Don't do it because it's a trend or because you think you should; use it as evidence to prove to yourself that you deserve love. That means make time for it no matter what and meditate in the way that clicks for you (guided meditation, gratitude journaling, walking meditations, or sitting in silence).
Make gratitude your most consistent habit.
Understand the irrelevance of your body: we all gain weight, lose weight, age, change, grow, and will eventually leave this earth. Our bodies are not who we are; they're simply the physical home for us to be in for a while. Treat them kindly, but don't give them more importance than that.
Saturate yourself with love before you get out of bed every morning. Visualize your best self, and then surround her with love and light before you even brush your teeth or make your bed.
Seek out the things in life that your body reacts to: what makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck, gives you butterflies, or energizes you better than a cup of coffee would. When you become your truest self, you'll know because every cell of your being will vibrate with purpose.