“Love yourself first, because that’s who you’ll be spending the rest of your life with.”

I think our natural instincts are to be hard on ourselves and be self-deprecating. Even resorting to self-deprecating humor is almost automatic. It’s easy and we do it every day. Why is that? Why do we choose to pick ourselves apart, rather than build ourselves up?

I recently came to a pretty heavy realization-

I owe myself so many apologies.

We are the one constant in our lives. We can’t ever leave ourselves so we take advantage of that. We slap our wrists when we say something mean or negative about somebody else, and yet we compare, hate and name-call our own bodies and minds as if it’s okay. As if it’s not wrong. As if it’s normal.

It’s not okay. It is wrong. It’s not normal.

How can we expect someone to love us unconditionally, when we don’t even love ourselves? We need love from different people because it gives us different things. One of those people you need love from is you. You need love from your parents, and your friends and the person you choose to marry. But YOU can give yourself a type of love that no one else can; because you know yourself better than anyone in the world.

Stop hating on yourself and start cutting yourself some slack.

No one is perfect but no one deserves to be acknowledged for their so-called flaws and not appreciated for their inner and outer beauty. We attract what we exude. If we exude something other than confidence and love, that is what we’ll receive. Before you call yourself fat, or stupid, or ugly, or boring, or mediocre- stop and think. Why are you calling yourself that? Is it really worth it? Is that going to make anything better?

The answer is no. Making yourself feel terrible about yourself is not going to fix anything. It will just make everything worse.

So, start apologizing to yourself. You need it more than you realize.