"You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try loving yourself and see what happens." - Louise L. Hay.
In today's society, loving yourself can be harder now more than ever. Women (and men. Don't get me wrong, this is about everyone) have so many outlets from all different ends of social media. You see a picture of a supermodel on Twitter with a "perfect" body. Instagram posts from people with thousands and thousands of followers that get 300+ likes, and you wonder, "why don't I get that many likes?". The performance of a celebrity at an awards show and as soon as the performance is over, thousands of tweets about how she "slayed" and looked flawless during the entire thing. The posts and blogs from "health" and "fitness" people, saying how their product will "Give you the perfect summer body!".
There is no "perfect" body. If you love your body, girl (or boy) go for it. Wear those shorts. Wear that bikini and flaunt that crop top. Loving yourself will get you so much farther in life. Once you start to love yourself, you'll be so much happier. I can promise you, the day you stop looking in the mirror and saying "I don't like this about myself" and start saying "I like this part of me" is the day that you will be happy. Confidence flows into every aspect of your life. It flows into your personal life, friendships, relationships, school, and work life.
To be completely honest, not everyone is going to like you. I'm sure that you already knew that. You won't be everyone's cup of tea. But you are so much better than what other people think of you. If you stop listening and thinking about what other people say to you or about you, and start thinking positive thoughts about yourself, you'll be so much happier. Your confidence in yourself will reflect in your life and it will have a positive influence on your entire life. Try each day to say one positive, nice thing about yourself. Whether it's about how you look, or what you do in your life, make it happen. It will become a habit.
I know that loving yourself is hard. I know it's hard to say "I love this flaw about myself". But if you stop comparing yourself to others and say "I'm going to do this for myself", it will be so much easier to live your life to the fullest. Choosing to not care about what people thought about me was one of the best choices I made in my entire life. Choose confidence, and choose to be happy.
“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What's important to me is not others' opinions of me, but what's important to me is my opinion of myself.” - C. JoyBell C.
