BODY POSITIVITY: SELF LOVE.

I was always a little shy from a young age and I preferred to spend time alone than to spend time with people (I still do.)

When my little brother was playing outside I was probably locked in my room with a book reading or drawing characters from my favorite stories.

This did not make me fun to be around other kids who just wanted to play. I was never really super smart when I was young, nor I did not know my potential by then .And kids can be brutal when they are judging you, I was laughed at for my handwriting and for getting even the simplest answers wrong. I felt like I did not want to try, coz who cares right? Do not worry, when I went to a public school that attitude was whooped right out of my head and the importance of studying drummed into my brain.

I thank God for those teachers who caned me into shape; I would be a useless nobody right now if not for them.

Parents and teachers please do not quote me on that, I will deny it.

Anyway, that is not the point in this story; forgive me I do tend to stray far far away from the topic.

The topic today is self-love. Everybody talks about self-love but most of us do not understand what it is. As I write this article I will willingly confess that I am not a master on the subject.

Just when you think you understand what it means, you learn a new definition.

To me, Self-love simply means loving yourself regardless of what other people think about you.

It entails spending time with yourself in silence and learning your voice, accepting and embracing yourself for who you are and then proudly showing others who you are.

Sounds simple?

It is not that simple.

A few months ago I was practicing guided meditation and the voice said, find one thing you love about yourself and focus on that.

Did you know I realized the only thing I love about myself was my tongue?

Because it was the only part of me I considered as perfect.

I thought:

My teeth are rotted in some places.

My thighs are too fat.

My stomach is flabby wabby.

My hair refuses to grow.

My nails keep chirping off.

My face has so many pimples it looks like the Sahara sand dunes...

Should I go on?

My list of things I did not like about myself was longer than the list of things I loved about myself.

I perused my whole body and the only thing I liked was my tongue.

That was when I realized I need an attitude adjustment.

I started the journey to Find Self-Love.

When I started, I thought, hey this is easy.

Just one day or two and I will be own this.

Welllllllllll.....

I am still on the journey, there are some days when I wake up and think I look like a million bucks while there are others I wake up and think, kill me now (please don't).

Sometimes you feel really good about yourself until someone says something stupid like "you are okay with your weight? Are you sure you do not want to lose some weight? "

You know you should not let those comments get to your head because peoples opinion do not matter but somehow it keeps repeating in your mind.

You know the reasons why you are awesome but sometimes it takes a little bit of extra effort to remind ourselves of those reasons. To me, that is self-love: Working every day to love me no matter what situation I am in or what I look like.

I have been on this journey for several months and what I have learned so far is that self-love involves:

1) Taking time to care for yourself.

We tend to eat what is placed in front of us, or even to spend time with those people who are around us or buy things that we have been using since we were young.  Most of us do not ever stop to analyze what is in the food we eat?  What is in the soap we shower with? What do I get from the friends I surround myself with? We have fallen into this hole where we do things because we have been doing them for so long and are comfortable with doing them. I am not saying that taking care of oneself involves being critical with literally everything that you come into contact with, but it does involve taking time to analyze what we put into or on our body. There are some foods we just eat because they are delicious but they have zero nutritional values to our body. If you want to have some pizza and cake because they are delicious, go ahead but first make sure to get all the nutritional values for your body. Give your body some proteins, some vegetable, and some good carbs first before you go around foraging for delicious foods. With the rate at which people are dying from cancer, it will not hurt if you are a bit more careful about what touches your body or goes into your body. I know that you cannot be sure the fruits and vegetables you eat are organically grown unless you grow them yourself but not everyone has time to grow them.

2) Take up a hobby you love to help you spend time with yourself.

There is this song by Pink called Sober that has this one line that says I do not want to be that girl who never wants to be alone. I do not want to be the girl who has to fill the silence, the quiet scares me coz it explains the truth.I love Pink.I feel like that wraps up everything I am about to say today.Some of us, I included never want to be alone or spend time alone because we are scared of our thoughts. We are scared to spend time with our self.

The reason I decided to start taking up meditation and yoga this year was to get to spend time with me more.

To go deeper into my subconscious and trying to balance my mind, body, and soul.

I was lucky to learn earlier in my life that my hobby is writing and I get to spend time doing it, it's what gets me up in the morning.

Find what you love that does not include everybody, do it and listen to yourself think for a second, you may be surprised to find out that you are interesting.

3) Do not be too hard on yourself when you fail.

I have failed. Lots of times. At things I know and at things that I do not know.

When I was eighteen years old and just graduating from High School, I thought I knew everything. I thought that I had already mastered life. Well, I came to realize that I know nothing about life.

When I failed at first I would take it so hard and personally, my mantra was a failure is not an option.The bad thing about failure not being an option is that you do not have room to try new things.

There is no room to learn from mistakes. Nowadays when I fail, I take it as a lesson on what not to repeat next time, not as a mark of personal failure.

4) Dream big.

When I was in high school I used to believe that I could conquer the world, that I could control the world if things just go the way I want them to go. Then they did not go the way I wanted them to go and I lost those dreams. I am here relearning how to dream again because dreams do come true if you follow them diligently, you cannot let one failure throw you off-course, trust me. When you fail in one way, find another way that works. I am not a doctor right now like I dreamed I would be one day, but life has taught me that disappointments are part of life, but it is not a reason to ever give up.

5) Trust yourself (confidence)

Sometimes you have to shut off the world, shut off what everyone thinks of, shut off other people's opinion and do what your gut tells you. Follow what you feel is the right thing to do. I got so used to doing what other people tell me, I got so used to trusting other people's opinion other than my own. Then I went through this journey of finding self-love and I came to realize that I should trust myself more often.

I came to realize that I know what I am doing, I am not always wrong all the time.

You just have to take a moment, listen to your gut and do what you want, not what other people want.

6) Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

I feel like this is the most important lesson about self-love I have learned so far.

The bible says Love your neighbors as you love yourself. You have to treat others the way you would like to be treated. You cannot go around commenting about how others are fat and when someone comments that about you, you get angry at them. The way I enforced this in my life was every morning, I would tell my mum or grandma (whoever I was living with) just how pretty they look right before they stepped out for the day.

The smile on their face was everything. It made me feel good and it made them feel good. I feel like when you treat people with kindness, you can treat yourself with kindness. You cannot love or be kind to others if you do not love or be kind to your self.

There are other ways to self-love but these are the ones I have learned in the few months.

Hopefully, I shall learn some more as time goes by.

There is this whole book I wrote about my journey to Finding Self-love and it is currently free on Smashwords. If you are interested in reading about my journey I will leave a link below, just click and download.

Until next time, love yourself more.

I love you too.