the beginning
"Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers."
I've been thinking about this for a while now and I think I am ready to share these thought with you. By the way this post is very long so make yourself a coffee/tea and well I hope you like it.
self love - self confidence; self acceptance; body positivity
At some time in your life, you reach a point where you must ask yourself - do you want to please others or do you want to please yourself?
I have been in a really bad mood lately, well some kind of a down phase in my life. I mean I've been sitting in my room, drinking a lot of tea, listening to music, trying to figure out who I am and what I want. The days have passed but nothing seemed to change.
You probably haven't noticed yet, but I am a person filled with anxiety. I am scared to get close to people and over all I don't wanna disappoint anybody. That's what I am afraid of, not being good enough.
I haven't felt confident in months.
Little more than a year ago, I've felt really bad, mentally, some things happened, I changed, my life changed. I distanced myself from everybody, until today I have trust issues in everybody I met and it really kills me. I was in my own little world, trying to get back up, trying to hide everything behind a smile - it's scary what a smile can hide.
But at some point I was getting worse at hiding my feelings and eventually everything got to much.. I don't know how but I managed to get back up.
To be honest, I still have these days, sometimes weeks, when I feel really bad and insecure and I overthink literally everything, but I hope that I'll never end up where I once was. Firstly because I don't know if I would have the power to get up again and secondly because I have grown so much since then.
Do you ever feel physically sick because you know you are not good enough for anybody?
Nevertheless I am definitely not where I would like to be. I often perceive that feeling of not being good enough, the fear of failure, mainly because I am a perfectionist, but also because of everything that happened in the past. I don't wanna hurt anybody, so I guess it's the best idea not to talk too much about everything that happened.
"It's okay to feel out of control, like you're not doing well. You'll always come back from it, and you'll come back stronger than ever."
So for 2017 my main goal is to get more confident, to accept the fact that I am who I am and that it's totally okay.
Body positivity is another point on my to-do-list, but this one is more difficult, well at least for people to understand. You may have noticed that I lost some weight over the last couple of months. But by all means I haven't done that on purpose. I personally just wanna be happy with how I look which can be very difficult at times. I don't want to talk in great details about it, because this is not the topic of this article, but if you would like to know more about it, just let me know and I'll write another article.
But there's something I do wanna get out, something that has been bothering me a lot lately. I have received some compliments from people, saying how proud their are of me or how beautiful I look or whatever. And in some way these comments have hurt me a lot, so please be careful with what you say, sure there are people out there who have worked hard on themselves, but please remember that you never know the story behind the change. It's nice to get some lovely compliments but compliments don't always have to be about someone's appearance.
But there's something I do wanna get out, something that has been bothering me a lot lately. I have received some compliments from people, saying how proud their are of me or how beautiful I look or whatever. And in some way these comments have hurt me a lot, so please be careful with what you say, sure there are people out there who have worked hard on themselves, but please remember that you never know the story behind the change. It's nice to get some lovely compliments but compliments don't always have to be about someone's appearance.
Anyway.
I have a privat Instagram account (shanamauricio), where I stopped posting pictures, not because I didn't want to, but because I was scared. Scared to show my true colours. Nearly all my pictures on that account are 'outfit pictures' that where actually taken for my account related to this blog (mycupofmagic). You could probably say I have been fake, I have shared an image of my life that is everything but reality.
Some days ago I started posting pictures, pictures I would never ever have posted before.
You may ask yourself why I am telling you this.
Well here come the story. As I told you before I wanna get more self confident so I decided to start of with something simple, but difficult for me. I thought by showing who I really am I would somehow learn to love myself more, learn to be proud of myself. It's crazy because obviously I know all the people that 'follow' me over there, but it is more difficult for me to share pictures with them than with people I don't know.
You may ask yourself why I am telling you this.
Well here come the story. As I told you before I wanna get more self confident so I decided to start of with something simple, but difficult for me. I thought by showing who I really am I would somehow learn to love myself more, learn to be proud of myself. It's crazy because obviously I know all the people that 'follow' me over there, but it is more difficult for me to share pictures with them than with people I don't know.
"Self love is not selfish, it's important."
I have tagged all the pictures with 'msl', standing for 'more self love'. I decided to post pictures that are not necessarily perfect, but pictures that mean something to me.
So that's my first step in the right direction.
Now I want you to reflect this on your life. Are you happy with who you are? Do you love yourself?
Now I want you to reflect this on your life. Are you happy with who you are? Do you love yourself?
You may answer these questions with yes, and if so I am really proud of you, but most people have something they don't like about themselves. Whether it's something that has to do with their appearance or one of their characteristics.
Please have a look in the mirror, look at yourself, smile and say 'I love myself'. This may be a little strange at first, but try to remind yourself every time you look into a mirror."If you're searching for that one person that is going to change your life, take a look in the mirror."
But this is only the beginning, my beginning, I am still trying to figure out what works best for me, so I can't give you great advices. Nevertheless there are some things that are important to keep in mind.
So below I have listed a few things that I personally should remember; it's some kind of a list with little reminders:
- learn to say no
- it's okay not to be okay
- it's okay to feel lost sometimes
- surround yourself with people who care about you
- try to say 'thank you' instead of saying 'sorry', i mean instead of saying 'sorry I am late', you could say' thank you for waiting'
- don't be judgmental toward other people
- you can change the way you look at things
- you are strong
- you don't need a bunch of friends to be happy
- do what makes you happy
- don't betray yourself
- your appearance doesn't define who you are
- let yourself rest
- self acceptance is the first step toward recovery
- destroy the idea that you're not good enough
- you are beautiful and I hope that one day you'll learn to believe it
- forgive yourself
- make yourself a priority
- you're worthy of love
- everything is temporary
- you are not defined by your weakness
- you're great
"Things will get better, just give it time."
This started as an idea, now I have a plan and sharing these thoughts with you is my action.
I hope I can inspire somebody. This is my story and I really hope I'll get more confident soon.
It would be nice if some of you would join in, so we could all motivate ourselves.
See you soon,
* Please note that this is only a small part of my story and that I am posting this to share my thoughts with you, not to seek attention nor to get pitied.
3 comments:
Whatever that has happened in your past, let it not overtake you.Good luck for all your efforts. May the Lord be with you..
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Thank you Fatema. I'll do my best. :)
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