How to send Yourself a Valentine

By: Thérèse Buckingham, NBC-HWC

February is American Heart Month and Valentine’s Day is just four days away. So, I can’t think of a better time than now to talk about affairs of the heart. How about you?

It’s likely you’ve given and received a valentine in some form or another at some point in your life... but have you ever thought about how you might give yourself a valentine?

If you read my last article, The Gift You Didn't Get This Holiday Season,  you might think I am stuck in a rut with the idea of giving to oneself. But, I write about this topic because I passionately believe that giving oneself attention and love is critical to personal health and wellbeing.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. - Buddha

my own journey with self-love

A pause to appreciate my beating heart.

I’ll start with a little background on my own journey with self-love. A year ago my husband and I were listening to a podcast on our way to a Valentine's weekend getaway. The topic was on self-love. I turned to my husband and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to say that I love myself.”
 
It seemed like nonsense—a hippy-dippy, foo-foo, self-absorbed, vain idea to me. When I started to think about it, I realized that it would take a lot of work to silence the negative self-talk that came from a very critical and disapproving voice in my head. So, I did what any rational person would do and I brushed it aside and didn’t think about it again until this past fall. 
 
On a perfectly beautiful October day while enjoying a bike ride by myself, I was broadsided with this thought, “If I don’t love myself then why do I spend time taking care of myself?”

It was in that moment that I realized that eating a clean, real food diet, exercising, meditating, stretching, getting out in nature… were, in fact, acts of love. 
 
Why on earth would I take such care about my health and wellness if I didn’t love myself? I now believe that self-care is self-love. And, self-love is crucial to thriving and living with vitality. 

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Everything you do to take care of yourself is like a little love note to yourself. Because self-care is self-love.

Two Ways to Approach Self-Love

I’d like to propose that there are two approaches you can take to practice self-care and self-love. As a result, you may just have a happier, healthier heart. The first approach will help your heart thrive emotionally, and the second will help you build a stronger, physically healthy heart.

#1  Nurture unconditional love and self acceptance

Whether or not you believe you deserve your own self-love, you can start to nurture it with any of the following practices.
 

• Speak kindly. Practicing positive self-affirmations daily is a simple, yet beneficial, stress-reduction tool. Your brain really does believe what you say, and if it believes all the mean things you are saying to yourself, your emotional well-being will suffer.  You can short-circuit negative self-talk with affirmations!

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• Send yourself an actual valentine. If you were to do this, what would you write in it? Here’s one to help you get started, and if you want more affirmations to inspire your self-love Louise Hay has written many inspirational self-love affirmations that might help you get started on your own.

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• Nurture your emotional wellbeing. There’s a saying, “fake it until you make it.” We can all do little things everyday to show ourselves love, care and compassion. What will you do today to show you care enough to do this one thing for yourself? What will you do tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that…? Deliberate acts of kindness towards yourself communicate love to your brain and helps you actualize a positive self-image. After a while you will believe yourself when you look in the mirror and say, “I love you.”

 

• Embrace joy. Joy and laughter are good for the heart, so discover what makes your heart sing and do those things frequently. Discover ways to make yourself laugh. Laughter is good medicine and the benefits of regular belly laughs go beyond your heart.

 

• Practice gratitude. A gratitude practice can help you appreciate what you have and focus on what’s going well in your life. This, in turn, will promote positive emotions that support purpose and self-esteem. Both of these articles offer steps on creating a formal or informal gratitude practice: The Health Benefits of a Gratitude Routine and Thankfulness: How Gratitude Can Help Your Health 

Research is confirming that gratitude is good medicine and that a gratitude practice in any form can boost emotional and physical well-being. It can be as simple as making a mental or written note of what you’re grateful for at the beginning or end of the day.

Recharging in nature is heart healthy

Treat your heart like your life depends on it, because it does!

Now let’s turn our focus to the physical heart—the one pumping inside your chest and keeping you vibrant and alive. 

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., and is also a preexisting condition that increases the risk of severe illness from COVID-19. (Read more about heart disease from the CDC)  

President Lyndon B. Johnson first proclaimed February as American Heart Month 57 years ago in 1964. The sad news is that deaths from cardiovascular disease have increased 17.1% worldwide in the past decade.

“In most cases, heart disease is preventable when people adopt a healthy lifestyle, which includes not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, controlling blood sugar and cholesterol, treating high blood pressure, getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week and getting regular checkups.” (heart.org) 

 We all know that healthy habits help us build strong, resilient bodies. Your lifestyle can negatively or positively impact your heart. There’s a push towards lifestyle medicine that centers on a whole-food, plant-based diet; physical activity; adequate rest and recovery; stress management and social connections to not only promote health but also to treat and reverse disease.

This brings us to the second approach to practicing self-care and self-love. 

​​​#2 Send yourself a valentine by adopting a heart smart lifestyle

• ​​​Eat a diet largely consisting of unprocessed, real, whole foods. Bump up your servings of veggies per day. They have phytonutrients and antioxidants that help protect your heart. Highly processed foods can damage the endothelium (the inner cellular lining of the blood vessels and the lymphatic system) and harm your heart. 

• Get regular exercise. It’s recommended that we get at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise a week. You can walk, dance, bike, run, ski, row, swim… Any movement that increases your heart rate is advantageous. Remember, the best exercise is the one you’ll do, so find an activity you enjoy and schedule it into your week. Additionally, we need 2 days a week where we spend some time on resistance training to maintain strength and lean muscle mass.

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• Sleep, sleep, sleep...quality, duration, and regularity are important. An inconsistent bedtime and not getting enough deep, regenerative sleep can negatively impact heart health. Researchers found that "irregular sleep duration increased the risk of heart disease. Those with the most irregular sleep duration and variable bedtimes had more than double the risk of developing heart disease, compared to those with less variability in sleep duration and more consistent bedtimes.”

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• Reduce stress. Some stress is okay and can actually be beneficial. Exercise, for example, creates short term stress that helps you build stronger muscles and endurance. However, chronic and excessive stress caused by never-ending worry can contribute to high blood pressure and hypertension. This is why it is so important to find ways to reduce and manage your stress load. You can fight stress with many of the healthy habits mentioned in this article. Try learning something new like meditation, yoga, a creative hobby or activity. Focus on the things you can change, the things you have control over, and let the other things drop from your worry list. The American Heart Association outlines 10 healthy habits for fighting stress. 

 

• Cultivate strong and meaningful relationships and connections with others. While this is not exclusive to improving heart health, research has shown that people who cultivate diverse social ties are generally healthier and live longer. “Scientists are finding that our links to others can have powerful effects on our health. Whether with romantic partners, family, friends, neighbors, or others, social connections can influence our biology and well-being.” These caring relationships—whether you are on the giving or receiving end—help to reduce stress by triggering "the release of stress-reducing hormones, ” and that will have a positive impact on your cardiovascular health.

Strong family relationships make for happy hearts

Above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

Proverbs 4:23

February is Heart Health Month

It’s probably no coincidence that February was designated as Heart Health Month with Valentine’s Day right in the middle. My hope is that after reading this you are inspired to protect your heart with some of the tips offered and live a heart healthy life. Because, taking care of your heart both emotionally and physically is important, and learning how to do that is how you take control of your heart health.
 
I’m taking February to heart on social media with posts that focus on how we can mindfully care for our heart. Follow along with me on Instagram or Facebook @VitalityinFocus for heart healthy tips, recipes, motivation and inspiration.

How will you handle your heart with the love and care it deserves? 

A board certified health coach can help you create your own, personalized heart healthy plan. You can connect with Thérèse or any of our other amazing National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches through our directory.