Loving Yourself 101

I’ve had a very hard time coming to love myself. I’m an insecure person, I don’t have much confidence in me. No reason, I just do. I’m pretty sure a lot can relate, especially if you’re a teenager. I’ve realized this in the past few years 'til now, I was always a negative person. I would jump to conclusions, think of the worst and never be happy with the choices I made. I always thought "nothing good isgoing to happen for me" or "I’m alwaysgonna stay unhappy." I would fill my head with these thoughts and just lock myself into my own little world. Eventually I decided that I wanted to open up that lock. I stepped outside and I took it in—the more you learn to love yourself each day, it’s amazing how your life can get better in an instant. I felt better. I felt amazing. I learned to throw away all those negative thoughts in my head and replace them with positive and happy thoughts. I feel like in your mid to late teens especially, majority of us are going through this phase where we’re hiding from ourselves when in reality, we don’t even know who we are. We don’t know what we feel, we don't know what we want. Life, to me, is all about self discovery. Life gives you the chance to find yourself, who you are and what you’re meant to do. I love keeping the mindset that we have the ability to change for the better by loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves. It’s not selfish to love yourself. It’s important to love who you are, no matter who you think you are and who people say you are. No matter how many mistakes you’ve made in your life, you are perfect in your own way and no one can tell you otherwise. I certainly learned that the hard way. Loving yourself is having a deep appreciation for who you are, you accept every part of yourself; the imperfections, the embarrassments, the things you may sometimes fail at and all the great qualities along with that. For some people, they may not love themselves until they lose weight, 'til they get the job they want, or have the perfect boyfriend, etc. We tend to put conditions on our love but we don't realize that we don’t have to. We can love ourselves just the way we are. Who cares what people think?

We are all in charge of our own lives.

If you’re not willing to love yourself today, then you may not love yourself tomorrow, because the excuse you have today, you may or may not still have tomorrow, and maybe I’ll have the same excuse 15 years from now, and who knows, what if I’m holding myself back from such great things all because of this one? Love is something we choose. Just like we choose hate, or anger, or sadness. Like we have the ultimate choice to forgive someone who hurt us and heal from there on. You can choose to be grateful for what you have, with the people your surrounded with. You always have the choice. You just have to find that choice within yourself.

For a lot of us, yeah, loving yourself is really hard. But until you put yourself to the test, you may never learn. You're the one that is going to have to take the first step. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then when? In my world, I have only ever focused on my faults, my mistakes, my insecurities. I’ve always focused on trying to make others happy instead of putting myself first. I never ever wanted to be alone, even though I was at a point in time where I thought I wanted to. I always feared to do things on my own—it really put down my journey to self-love, to making myself happy. I had to learn to be comfortable with myself, no matter how much I wanted to avoid it. Now, learning to love yourself automatically gives you self confidence, worth, and generally you tend to feel and be more positive. I swear to you, once you can learn to love yourself, you can be so much happier, and that’s a guarantee. Forgive yourself for your faults. This is life—you’re allowed to mess up, even if anyone says otherwise. Give yourself a break. We can be so hard on ourselves sometimes. No one is perfect and you can’t keep those expectations for yourself.

Challenge yourself. Take risks. Enjoy the life you’ve been given. Show people who you are and what you can be capable of. Be more confident, let go, and just see what happens.

It's a simple belief—lovingyourself.