I’m going to say something that very well might shock you. You are worth appreciation, love, and respect. Not only from others but especially from yourself. Now I know, I know you’re probably thinking “But wait, what about what society tells me?” But let me stop you right there.

I have another crazy idea. What if your opinion of yourself, only comes from yourself? Sound too good to be true? Keep listening, and you too may buy into this radical idea.

Now do me a favor for a second, think back to when you were a child. Your parent is waking you up in the morning. You wake up, throw on whatever you picked out or your parent put out for you. You brush your teeth, maybe your mom does your hair for you. You aren’t even tall enough to see the mirror in your bathroom. You go to school without a second thought about what you looked like.

Because it did not matter. What mattered was seeing your best friend walk into the classroom, what was for lunch, and what game was going to be played at recess. When did you become aware of appearance? When was the first time you questioned if you fit in or if you were beautiful?

If you’re anything like me, you don’t even remember the moment you started stepping on your tip toes to see the mirror in the morning, the moment you questioned if the hairstyle you had would be okay to leave the house with, or if your clothes would be acceptable.

What happened between then and now? What went wrong that changed our blissfully ignorant self-confidence, to borderline obsessive self-hate. I’ll tell you what happened, we lost the idea that appearance didn’t matter. We lost the thought that what was important in life is who you surround yourself with, what you do with your time, and how you see yourself. That beautiful child’s view is the exact idea I’m selling.

Going off of thinking experiments, let me ask you another question. Do you look at your best friend and think of all their flaws, and how they could fix all of them? Don’t answer that, because if your answer is yes, you are kind of an asshole. Anyways, moving on, I’d hope that many of you don’t do that. So why are you all so okay with doing it to yourself? Especially with things you can’t control.

You sure as shit are not going to look at your friend, who maybe had a good time over the holidays enjoying that home cooking, and think “wow you’d be so much more worth my love if you would shed those pounds.” So why are you like that to yourself? Does your intelligence drop with the number of breakouts you have? Does your humor or compassion become nonexistent when your legs start touching or your old jeans don’t fit?

Essentially what I’m trying to tell you is that you are all bad-ass beautiful people. And I want you all to see that because you all deserve to. You deserve to wake up in the morning feeling like you want to leave the house. You deserve to not freak out when that notification pops up that someone tagged you in a photo on Facebook or Instagram.

You all deserve to love yourself just because you do. Like do you all understand how much your body loves you? It’s always trying to keep you alive, keeping you breathing during your three naps a day, and even finding ways to beat off illnesses that try to creep they’re way into you. It loves you so much and it's time you start loving it back.