How I Learned To Love Myself And My Flaws

I know that each and every one of us has at least one thing they’re insecure about. Whether it be your body, hair, acne, or scars. Sometimes looking in the mirror at ourselves can be difficult. We are our own biggest critic and enemy sometimes and it can truly destroy our confidence. I speak of experience. Let me share my journey of how I learned to love myself and give you a couple of tips if you’re struggling too. ♥

Growing Up

Growing up, I started to realize how different I was from everybody else. When I was younger, I didn’t realize it as much because I wasn’t much shorter than my 1st-grade friends and they thought I was cool for having crutches. If anything, my elementary school years were the best because I didn’t really feel out of place and kids were nice.

As the years went by, my friends started growing and I stayed about the same height. Kids started looking at me weird and started asking why I’m so short and why I can’t walk. That’s when I started really noticing every flaw I had and I hated them. I became obsessed with trying to make myself as perfect as I could. I had to have the perfect hair, the perfect skin, my clothes had to fit in a way that would make my body look “better.” I completely lost myself in my insecurities.

Changing My Mindset

Eventually, I had a hard look in the mirror and quickly realized I couldn’t go on feeling so horrible with myself. It was mentally exhausting and not the way I wanted to live my life. Of course, I have my whole life with myself. How could I go a lifetime not liking myself? I realized I needed to start doing something that would change the mentality about how I thought about myself.

In result, I decided to start writing down everything I loved about myself. I grew determined to make my “what I love about myself” list much longer than my “what I don’t like about myself” list.

It looked a little something like this:

• I have pretty hair
• I have pretty eyes
• My sense of humor is great
• My ability to be positive
• I’m caring
• I’m creative

Slowly, I started realizing that I had a lot that I loved about myself. I also noticed that a lot of the things I loved about myself had nothing to do with my looks. Who I am on the inside is what I really love and that opened my eyes. Then I realized that the body that I wanted to change so badly before was the body that I was going to have for the rest of my life.

The only way to change anything was to change the way I felt about it.

Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways

Jerry Corsten

Acceptance

Every day, I started accepting what I saw in the mirror. Even better, I didn’t hate what I saw and I started falling in love with who I am on the inside. Granted, the problem was how I felt about my body but I also needed to change my mindset. At the end of the day, they go hand in hand.

There were a few things I decided to do to further make positive changes towards my physical well being.

• Began working out
• Eating healthier
• Found clothes that made me feel confident

As I made these little and positive changes, physically and mentally, that made me feel good about myself, there was soon a smile looking back at me in the mirror.

Loving Yourself Is A Process

Loving yourself is an ongoing journey and process but you have to start somewhere. First, you need to believe that it’s possible that you can love yourself and your flaws. Stop looking at your flaws as something detrimental. Change your mindset and focus on what you love about yourself first. Then, find ways you can make positive changes that will ultimately help you be more confident. As listed above, I began working out and eating healthier.

Will you have bad days? Of course. Nobody goes every single day feeling completely amazing about themselves but you can always bounce back.

Remember, every flaw makes you who you are and there is nobody else out there like you. You are unique and that is special. You are special.

Keep going, you warrior.

Xoxo,

Amanda Burnett