“You owe yourself the love that you so freely give to other people.”

If I have learned anything in my 21 years of life, it is to NEVER take yourself for granted. Never belittle yourself to the point of emptiness and never bury yourself in so many “what ifs” that you lose sight in what is most important – you.

Positivity is so important in my day to day life. I like to turn someone’s bad morning into an “it’ll get better because the sun is shining” kind of day. I tend to make jokes to someone who I know is hurting deep inside because in that tiny moment, I know they can just breathe. These are important moments in my life and to have the optimistic mindset is a blessing to me. The only problem is when I am faced with myself.

I can look at the most pitiful flower and see the beauty, I can look at the rain falling from the sky and get teary eyed, and I can see the love in the eyes of an enemy but I cannot convince myself that I am worth it.

Struggling with inner love is a feeling that, like myself, people hide all the time. Males, females, mothers, fathers, children, etc. but the root to it all comes from our mind. It comes from the way we wake up in the morning. The way we praise ourselves for doing simple tasks such as taking the trash out. We HAVE to remind ourselves that our lives are worth it.

Now, I know you’re probably rolling your eyes by this point because this is easy for someone who “has never gone through tough times.” Tough times don’t always have to be to the extreme, we all handle our tough times differently. What may be tough to me is a breeze to you and vice versa. “Tough times” can be anything to making a decision that will stay with you for the rest of your life all the way up to being abused by someone who you felt love for. They are all tough and they all get to us in different ways.

I talk to myself all of the time and lately I have been saying positive things throughout the day. Here’s a funny example. One Saturday I needed to clean up around my apartment so of course I had to clean the litter box. With the sun shining through the blinds and the breeze coming from the open window, I looked over at my cat and said, “We aren’t doing so badly are we?” I started naming all of the little things I had started doing for myself. At this point I think she had ran away, but I still kept talking. I PRAISED myself for cleaning a litter box…weird. Why couldn’t I have just thought about these things instead of saying them out loud to an empty room? Once the words come out of your mouth, it becomes real. You have meaning to your sentence and more times than not, you will say it several times to make the praise more meaningful.  

We aren’t meant to keep our emotions bottled up forever and we aren’t meant to live in a zombie state of mind. We are meant to love ourselves even if it takes a little longer than others to accomplish that love.

Ok Lexi, why did you ramble on for so long?

I don’t want sympathy because I “don’t love myself” and I don’t want everyone to relate to this post. I hope that there is someone who laughs at this and praises themselves immediately. Not everyone struggles with self-love and not everyone who does struggle, struggles in the same capacity. Our bodies are precious – yes, but it is our MIND that we need to focus on. We need to focus on reasons we love ourselves and reasons we are here. If we all decided to start praising and loving ourselves, it would be easier and more meaningful to go out and praise your neighbor.

“You owe yourself the love that you so freely give to other people.”

I found this quote tonight and I read it. I read it 100 times, took a deep breath and grabbed my computer. 

You’re worth it.