I have been living a life full of insecurities and it is so hard to move on. However, there are several reasons why I want to learn how to feel more secure with myself. Here is the list of the biggest reasons why I want to work on my insecurities.

I want to be able to love someone else.

I have realized that if you do not first love who you are, it is extremely hard to love someone else. I feel as if I still have the ability to love, but I lose myself while I am loving someone else. The biggest issue that I found was that I began relying solely on the person I was loving to provide me with everyday happiness. That becomes draining. It hurt me to continuously drain the energy out of the person I said I loved everyday. How can I bring the person I love down each and every day? To me, that is not love. It is important to me before I try to love someone again, that I can look at myself with adoration.

It sucks that I am so good at self-deprecating jokes. I hate that it is so easy for me to make fun of myself. It is almost as if every joke I have to hand out is about a stupid thing I have done or about my appearance. I can imagine how awkward that must be for others. Of course, they laugh along, but how can other's respect me if I don't even respect myself?

Is it possible to stop nitpicking myself?

Every time the weekend roles around and it is time to hit the town, I catch myself in the mirror nitpicking. I honestly think if I didn't spend so much time picking out things I claim to hate about myself, my routine of getting ready could potentially be cut in half. And in all honesty, does anyone really notice the things that I notice? Probably not.

My friends love photo shoots, but I do not. My friends love location scouting and taking amazing VSCO- and Instagram-worthy photos. Do not get me wrong, I love the scouting part. However, when we arrive and it is time to take photos, my stomach drops. I am much more comfortable being behind the camera taking my friend's photos. I have broken down on multiple occasions and let my friends take my picture, which leads to deleting bulk amounts of photos. I have saved a few photos from these so-called "photo shoots," but I just want to be more comfortable doing things my friends enjoy.

I hate the amount of opportunities I didn't take.

I have been presented with so many different opportunities, and I did not take them. These range from opportunities to love someone, chances to go to really cool events, opportunities to speak in front of people, and even job offers. This is a really extensive reason for why I want to be able to love me, believe in me, and in more simpler terms feel more secure with myself overall. If I could just believe in myself a bit more, I could have probably had so much more content for my professional resume. If I loved myself a bit more, I would probably of not lost my chance to love another person. I dislike greatly how easy it is for me to cancel on someone or not take an opportunity just because I don't feel okay with myself.

Sometimes I feel like I do not have a voice.

Have you ever been sitting in class when the professor asks a question and you know the answer, but you do not raise your hand because you are second guessing yourself? That is me 24/7. More often than not there is something I want to say, but I am too scared to speak out. The "what ifs" flood my mind. What if I sound dumb, what if what I have to say starts an argument, what if they do not like me because of my opinion? It's not fair that I let my class participation grade suffer as a result of this. It is not fair that I do that to myself at all.

I am the queen of comparing. It could be a night where I feel really confident and on top of the world, then I compare myself to someone else in the room. The moment I compare myself, I ruin my night. I instantly want to go home and go to bed. This all goes back to missing out on opportunities. It sucks, and that is why I am working on loving myself more.