Love yourself

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don't wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.

-Alan Cohen 

One of the hardest things in life for me was to learn to love myself for who I was. I would constantly bring myself down, telling myself how I wasn't liked by anyone, that my teeth were crooked, that I wasn't as skinny as the other girls. After going through a difficult time with accepting myself and not pretending to be someone else, I finally defeated that little devil inside me that constantly said, "You're not pretty enough. You're not good enough. You'll never have friends. People don't like you." During this time, I turned toward Jesus, who is my friend and savior. I prayed to Him constantly, and he listened. Consoling in him relieved my heart of the pain I carried. Jesus took my backpack of insecurities and carried them for me along the way to my success, which was loving myself for who I am. I won't delve in to anymore detail of how I overcame it, but I'll talk about it in the future. This experience and rocky journey has motivated me to try things that I've never imagined trying. These things were so simple yet life-changing. Now, as a young adult (I still can't believe I'm 18 now!), I've learned to not judge myself, and that has led me to become accepting of others. Obviously, as a human being, I'm going to judge at times, but it's because of my personal set of morals, etc. It's human nature, peeps! ;) I do have my flaws, like being lazy at times, or overly sarcastic, or procrastinating. Those are things that can be easily fixed... tomorrow. :D But as a whole, I've changed substantially; I've become a compassionate and altruistic person, looking up to my mother and Jesus as selfless role models. All this has been achieved through learning to love myself dearly, and I hope my little vignettes could be of some use to you :) <3