It’s time for another installment of my Monday Motivation Series. In today’s post, I wanted to cover self love. One of my new year’s resolutions/goals, was to love myself a little bit more. I’m not talking about becoming extra, or self centered, but learning to love my strengths and my flaws. Often times we beat ourselves up over the most ridiculous things, and being someone who has always had a really low self esteem, it’s really hard to love yourself. I’ve always looked at myself, as too fat, not good enough, too tall, not popular enough, and the list goes on. As I’ve gotten older, and now that I’m in my 30’s, I’ve come to find out that none of that is really worth stressing over anymore. Who gives a shit if I’m not good enough for someone, I’m good enough for myself. Who cares if I’m not in the best shape and don’t look like all of these models? I love food, and I work out so that I can eat as much as I want hahaha! Being too tall, well, that I really can’t help. That I’ve just had to come to terms with. Self Love may also be different for everyone. Some people might think self love is taking care of your body and going to the gym and eating healthy, whereas others may think that self love is taking the time to be lazy and eat a bag of chips along with a tub of ice cream. Whatever your version of self love/self care is, you do you boo. I’ll root for you whichever way you go, as long as you learn to love the skin you are in.
I feel like with the big boom of social media over the past several years, it’s become even harder for the younger generation to love themselves, because it’s so easy to compare yourself. When I was a teenager, I would have to wait for a magazine, whereas nowadays you instantly see a new picture of the Kardashians, a look that unfortunately so many girls are trying to achieve. Why does everyone need to look the same? I understand wanting to perfect your body by going to the gym or changing your hair/makeup/fashion, but I’ll never understand the people that will stop at nothing to look like a clone of their favorite celebrity. When I heard the news that Kylie Jenner had taken out some filler from her lips to make them smaller, I instantly thought of all of the girls who would do the same. I don’t mind plastic surgery, and if you want to enhance certain features, good for you, it’s when people completely transform their faces to all look the same that really irks me. Ok, I really rambled, back on topic!
So, for today’s post, I wanted to go into a 10 things that may help you get into the habit of loving yourself. Y’all have no idea just how important self love is.
Focus on your needs, not your wants.
There are a lot of things in this world that a lot of us want. However, are these things that you actually need? I’m not saying that it’s not ok to “treat yoself” every once in a while, but make sure it’s exactly that; a treat. Once you start buying more things that you want rather than what you need, you can start to not value those things that you so badly wanted, and you might even put yourself into debt, which will in turn stress you out and discourage you.
Take time for proper self care.
Self care will be different for everyone. For some it may be going to the gym or eating healthy. For others this may mean taking a break and watching sappy movies all day long while eating a whole bag of chips, a tub of ice cream, and a cup o noodles for dinner (lol, I would know). For others, it may mean putting on a face mask and closing your eyes for a minute, or going out to get a massage. You need to take the time to practice self care, because all of us deserve “me time.”
Respect your body.
I will say it again for the people in the back, RESPECT YOUR BODY! Oftentimes, myself included, we don’t respect our bodies. Whether it’s what we put into our bodies, or just what we think of them. I can stand in front of a mirror and go through everything that is considered a flaw to me. Most people (women especially) do this all the time. We judge ourselves and then we end up comparing ourselves to celebrities, or Insta models. We are not all built the same. I don’t care what anyone says, with the right amount of diet and exercise, we do not have the same body types. I’m tall and have a slight curve to my body because I’m body heavy. Whereas my mom is shorter and has the skinniest legs I think I’ve ever seen on this planet. We can both change certain things, so my mom can make her legs slightly bigger, and I can make mine slightly smaller, however we will never look exactly the same. You were born into one body. Alter it however you please, but just remember to respect the skin that you are in. Stop trying to achieve this picture perfect version of your body that you are literally killing yourself over working to obtain it.
Cut out toxicity.
I’ve talked about this numerous times on the blog. Cut out anything or anyone that creates toxicity in your life. Even if it is a family member. At one point in my life I realized that the crowd of people that I was hanging out with was bringing no value to my life. They had no goals, and they fed off of one another’s negativity. I realized that I needed to be surrounded by people who had goals and wanted more in life and worked hard to get to where they were. I cut out that entire group of friends. I focused on myself and my goals, and once I changed my outlook on everything in life I surrounded myself with like minded people. We all challenged one another to be the best version of ourselves. There was no competition between each other, we just empowered one another every day. We had our bad days, but everyone has those. Cutting out those toxic people out, completely changed my life for the better. I haven’t looked back since.
Don’t be a people pleaser.
This is a huge problem that I had. I never wanted to make anyone mad, or not like me. I know there are people out there that just don’t vibe with me, but for the most part, I was always trying so hard to make people like me. Girrrrrl, (or guy) you may be the juiciest peach in the bunch and there will always be someone who doesn’t like peaches. It’s just a way of life. Don’t ever put yourself down just to feed someone else’s ego. The perfect example is The Devil Wears Prada. As soon as she stopped pleasing her boss, she found herself again and found something that she enjoys.
Have a purpose.
This may be obvious to some people, but for those of you who never thought of this, make sure you have a purpose in life. Whether it’s a bunch of temporary purposes, or a long term one. You can’t go through life without having a purpose. I’m not going to get into religion or science, but I do believe that everyone is put on this earth for a purpose. Everyone in this world is so different, but as one we have opposing views where we are able to make one another view things in a way that we never would have if we would have been by ourselves. Whether your purpose is to help rescue all of the animals, clean up the environment, or even become the best CEO there ever was, make sure you have that purpose and you strive to be the best version of yourself.
Be yourself.
Never apologize for being yourself. We are all different for a reason. This is something that I wish I would have appreciated a long time ago. I was never one to be myself, because I just wanted to fit in. I sacrificed who I really was just so that I would be liked. That was, until high school. Once I started high school (as terrible as it was for me), I realized I don’t give a shit anymore. I wanted to be myself. I no longer wanted to be like everyone else. They were all clones, who dressed the same, liked the same things, and never had a mind of their own. I didn’t want that. I chose to be myself, and I have found extremely meaningful friendships because of this. Always be unapologetically you.
Take a chance.
Taking chances are not for everyone. There are a lot of people who will never take a chance in their life, and are complacent with living their comfortable life. Everyone needs to take a chance at some point in their life. I took many chances in my life, and that’s how I learned from my life experiences. I moved to Texas, hoping to stay there for the rest of my life, but unfortunately, I had to move back home not even a year later. Then, I took a chance on this guy after many years of heart ache and toxic relationships, and he’s now my fiance. My fiance and I recently took the chance of moving our lives to Florida. We took a huge chance, and we still don’t know where this new life will take us, but we’ve already seen an improvement in both of our lives, and the lives of our dogs. Everyone is more relaxed, and we have so much more here. I mean we moved from a shitty one bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom home with a yard for the dogs to run around in! That alone is worth the chance we took.
Hold yourself accountable.
Never try to pawn off your mistakes on someone else. You chose this, whatever “this” is. When you make bad choices, it’s for a reason. It’s to learn from those mistakes. You can’t sit there and say “God/Universe (whatever you believe), must really hate me for putting me through this.” NO! Do not think this way. Most likely you made the decision to do something that God/Universe is showing you not to do it again. If you make a mistake, own up to it. I used to hate when people would make mistakes at my job and they would never own up to it. They would think that sweeping it under the rug and hoping it doesn’t get worse would be ok. Then, it WOULD get worse because they didn’t own up to it and try to fix it to begin with. I hold myself accountable for all of my actions. If I gain 10lbs after eating garbage for a month straight, you know damn well I’m holding myself accountable and not making excuses and blaming others for that. I could easily say, well with the move and constantly eating fast food I gained weight, so now it’s my fiance’s fault because he was the one who wanted to move in the first place. No, no, no, no. And another, NO! I chose to stuff my face with delicious fast food, so now it’s my choice to stop doing that and take care of my body. No one ever said that staying fit was easy.
Don’t give a f*ck.
Last, but definitely not least, don’t give a flying f*ck. Who cares what others think of you? Why would you take time out of your day to be unhappy and stressing about unnecessary shit, when you can just say eff it and go on being your awesome self?
In conclusion, those are my 10 ways to practice self love. I hope this helps some of y’all out there, and I’m going to continue working through 2019 to practice more self love, and who knows, maybe I’ll post an updated version of this. Are there any other ways that you would suggest in practicing self love?
xoxo Monica
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