Category: Beautiful You

The Oxford Dictionary defines value as, ‘The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.’ Finding importance in ourselves, making ourselves worth something can be difficult. But why?

It took me a while to start valuing myself again, to find my own self worth. Now that I have that back, I feel more alive. I have more respect for myself and others. My point of view on life has changed drastically. How I want to be as a person and who I want around me has evolved.

Getting here was hard, I had to fall first before I finally realized that something was wrong. Through the ‘downs’ the voice in my head made me believe that I wasn’t worth it, that things happened to me as proof that this must be true. However, after a certain breaking point, I was able to open my eyes. I came to the realization that this is the only life I have to live, we are not invincible, and I asked myself, “how do I want to live out my life?” I wanted there to be change, and to accomplish that I needed to make changes in myself. I began to let go of things, I removed people from my life that I felt were putting me down, who didn’t respect me or appreciate me. Getting rid of the people who didn’t value me allowed me to be happy again. Paying attention to my surroundings, I started to learn what I valued the most in other people, and that I can value those same things in myself.

Finding value in myself doesn’t end here, this will be something that will continue to change, and with the change I will learn how to adapt so that I can always feel like I am worth something.

What do I most appreciate about myself? This I really don’t know how to answer. I have never thought about it before when it comes to myself. I know what I appreciate about certain people in my life, but me….

Can being witty be a thing to appreciate? Well, for me, it will do. I love that I can make people laugh with my quick wit responses. However, when I think about one of my most positive memories about myself the only memory that quickly comes to mind is when I received a positive reaction from my friend Dr. Noor when I asked him a question. I don’t remember the question I had asked, but his response, instead of the answer was him telling me how smart I was, and that his own students never thought to ask this question. That day, he helped build more confidence in myself when it came to my intelligence.

The problem isn’t that I don’t think I am intelligent, it’s more that I need to stop questioning myself. People can have strengths in something, but they don’t value them. Maybe that is why when answering the question, what do I most appreciate about myself? my intelligence isn’t the answer, not yet anyways….Now that I know this, this will be something I am going to work on. By the end of this year, I hope to value my intelligence.

You know that voice in your head, the one that loves to criticize you, causing self doubt? We all experience it. But, what does your voice tell you?

For me, my voice enjoyed telling me that I wasn’t good enough, that I should give up on things in life. Especially in December, where I experienced one thing after another, it seemed to be non-stop. That voice seemed to love taking advantage of jabbing at me while I was down. “Maybe it’s a sign that you should leave, move, runaway, stop trying to succeed.” But, because I’ve been through a lot in life already, I knew that eventually things would be okay. So I was able to shut that voice down sooner than I would have in the past, but I know that the voice will return.

Here’s the thing, I have no problem standing up for myself when it comes to other people. However, I never thought of standing up to myself. Why can’t I? And next time, I will. Instead of arguing with myself, putting myself down, I am just going to shut the voice down before it has a chance to cause any negativity in my life. I want to continue this year as healthy and happy as possible.

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My vision for myself is to be comfortable with all aspects of life. I don’t want to worry financially about certain things. I want to get proper rest again, feel refreshed! Overall I am looking forward to being successful on my next endeavor.

Things can surprise us, mostly we feel surprised by the worst. However, the worst is temporary, and we can change things in our own life, in our own self, to make life better. This last month I dealt with a lot of stress, which unfortunately continued into the new year. However, today, I was able to close that chapter in my life. I feel better, even though I didn’t get the exact solution that I had hoped for, but whatever, I am not allowing it to impact how I am going to be this year.

What I want for myself this year, and going forward is to not sweat the small stuff. I don’t want to let any more stress impact me the way it did this last month. I want to feel free again, not restricting myself in any way, which will be different from how I feel now, where I just got over the feeling that I was punched in the stomach after dealing with the curve balls that life throws at you. It put me in a bit of a depression, even after the situation was resolved, but I walked away just letting go. I need to be productive in order to move forward, it is difficult to do so dwelling on things that are out of my control.

With a great support system, along with confidence in myself I know I can accomplish the the goals I have set for myself.

Growing up I would often wear baggier clothing to hide my bone structure. My spine would show if I sat down, sometimes even my rib cage. I remember once, in high school, a girl pointed out how skinny I was. I was standing at the teacher’s desk, asking her a question, when this girl exclaimed, “Oh now, I get why you always wear hoodies, you’re so skinny.” Honestly, I didn’t think anything more than wearing hoodies to be comfortable. But, after that encounter I continued to wear them all the time. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, rumors were spread about me being anorexic or bulimic. Some people would call me names such as twiggy. Which, if you think about it, was a name of a model from the ’60s, so I guess it wasn’t that bad….but, of course they didn’t mean it as a compliment. In grade ten, I dated a guy who even asked me what bulimic meant. When I asked him why, he told me because his mom thought I was. I would have dinner at their place often, so she would see me eat all the time, the issue was she would never see me gain weight so right away she made an assumption. To make matters worse, after he had told me this, I had a meal at their place, and at the dinner table I started choking on a piece of chicken. I held the coughing in as much as I could, excused myself from the table, went to the washroom and continued to cough until I was no longer choking. This most likely made her assumption of me worse.

As I got older, I realized I may not be able to put on more weight by eating, but I could add more muscle mass. I became obsessed with working out. Obsessed to the point that I’d check the scale almost daily, which obviously wasn’t healthy. I would then start to compare my body with the body of other women who worked out as much as I did. I noticed changes in my personality because of this. If I missed a workout or didn’t meet a goal I set for myself regarding my body, I would become depressed. I eventually realized that this wasn’t healthy. I forced myself to take a break from working out, I avoided any scales that would be near me. Traveling made it easy for me to get through this challenge that I created. I wouldn’t pack any work out gear, that way I wouldn’t use the fitness facility at a hotel. As well, most hotels don’t have scales unless requested, so I would never request one. I even stopped following certain fitness fanatics on social media, I no longer wanted to compare my body with theirs. Once I felt fine again, I was slowly able to incorporate certain workouts back into my life, and now I can confidently workout everyday without it becoming an issue. I don’t use a scale anymore, and I actually feel a lot better about myself. During this process I’ve gained more respect for myself and I am able to enjoy life again.

Have you ever sat there and thought about how you actually feel about yourself? You know, it’s kind of tough. Daily, when asked how we are doing, we respond with good or fine. To avoid small talk, most people won’t answer with the truth. So, is being asked ‘how are you?’ really different than how we feel about ourselves? I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand. I thought on this one for a bit. I know I am fine, I know I am healthy, but since I am not being asked for small talk purposes, how am I really? Why do I need to lie to myself? Maybe it is the fear that if we acknowledge that we aren’t 100% happy with ourselves, that others would notice too. Would they judge us? Why does it matter what other people think anyways? We really need to care about how we think, how we feel.

So, how do I feel about myself? How I truly feel about myself has evolved over the year, but I am not where I want to be. When I get short with people, or snappy, I shut down – I don’t like confrontation, a trait that Garrett says is reflective of the Year of the Rabbit in Chinese astrology. But, I know it is more than that. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and if I hurt even an ounce of a person’s feelings, it breaks my heart. When I am moody, it really means I am not happy about myself at that moment. Most of the time when I get this way because I am dealing with stress. I’m an independent person for the most part, but I forget that I can accomplish things when I am under piles of stress. I then lash out at the ones closest to me. I try to avoid this by closing myself off to others, especially the ones closest to me. I need to remember to take care of myself. I work out, eat right, get the proper amount of sleep, and I am able to balance everything positive in my life. What I should start doing again is balancing the moments of stress. Write them down, make a list, organize what I should do daily to overcome the stress in a healthier way. Even start looking at the stress as something positive instead of approaching it in a negative way. Maybe then I will be happier with myself and all aspects of my life. That’s my hope anyways. Now, to take the steps to move forward in accomplishing this….I vow for the rest of 2019 to make note, hold my breath if I am going to lash out, and to appreciate every moment of life, even the bad.

In 2018 I acknowledged my own self worth. I loved myself more than I had before, the only issue I dealt with was that I still couldn’t put myself first. That started to change halfway through the year. I finally decided I was worth being first in my life. I realized what was actually preventing me from doing the things that I wanted to do was that I would allow other people to dictate how I lived my life. This needed to change. I no longer waited around for other people when it came to me enjoying my own life. I was tired of hearing; tomorrow, soon, next year. These words became trigger words for me. It wasn’t fair that I would miss out on simple enjoyments of life because I put my own time on hold – I was putting my life on hold. Taking action into my own hands was one of the best decisions I made. The more I spent time alone doing the things I enjoyed, the more I realized how much I was am actually worth. The saying, we only get one life to live is something I live by daily. I use it to fight people who try to hold me back, especially when they say, “there is always tomorrow.”
Since I took my life back I have experienced so much that I would not have been able to before. Some of my friends noticed the changes I was making and would even join me on my adventures.
Moving forward in 2019, I want to be the source of my confidence. I will not rely on others to define my worth. I hope to accomplish this by not allowing the negativity of others to impact me. I will continue my journey by surrounding myself with loved ones who respect me the way I respect myself.

Over the holidays, I purchased the book Beautiful You – A Daily Guide To Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary for my daughter. While going through pages of the book to see if it would be something that she could benefit from, I started to become intrigued. We decided as a family that starting today, January 1st, 2019, we would challenge ourselves individually and together by using the daily guides the book offers. I’ve never used ‘self help’ books before, but a few friends have explained to me how they have benefited from them. I am not sure what I will achieve from this, if anything, but I’m curious to see. Since talking about challenges in my first post, I thought I would incorporate this into my blog as well. Having anxiety will make it difficult for me to share publicly the daily challenges with the ‘world’ since I am a private person when it comes to personal matters.

So, let’s begin. This year, I am hoping to be more accepting of my flaws when it comes to my body. I workout daily to keep myself physically and mentally happy. However, one thing I need to work on and accept is that my body sometimes bloats. I get insecure when this happens, I don’t fully know why, it’s natural. I grew up skinny, no matter what I did I couldn’t gain weight, and I tried…I know, you’re probably thinking, poor me. I was made fun of, called names, and even had rumors spread about me that I was either bulimic or anorexic. On days that I would bloat, I looked like I was pregnant. I remember ordering food from somewhere once and the lady, in Chinese, asked Garrett how far along I was….I didn’t know who was more embarrassed, her or I.

This year I hope to get away from body shaming myself, ignoring beautiful photos just because I am not happy with how I look in them. I believe I can change this by not critiquing myself so much. Instead of judging photos that reveal my stomach, I should embrace those photos, I should even post those photos. There was a picture that was taken of me last summer while on a trip to Las Vegas. In this photo I stood next to a tree, my back is to the camera, and I am standing in a pose that causes a crease in my back. This happens to everyone who stands this specific way. This picture was actually one of my favorite pictures taken of me but I couldn’t get past the crease. Why couldn’t I? I know I am fit, I know I am healthy, but I assumed others would judge and think it was disgusting.
This leads me to another hope for this year regarding body imaging, I hope that the world can change how they view others. When using social media, it is easy to edit a photo or even just use a filter. Why do we need to? What is the worst that can happen if we don’t? We will still receive likes. Just know there will always be someone who has something negative to say, but why should we let that impact us and our own feelings? It really says something about the person being negative, not us.
Here’s to 2019 and posting those photos of ourselves that we think need to be edited.