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“If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” Ru Paul
Self-love is one of the most difficult things we as humans have to deal with, the number of hours we spent trying to fix ourselves, make us the better version of ourselves and wondering what we can work on next. It’s exhausting. Yet I still don’t know a single person who can 100% they love everything about themselves, which is ok too. But I personally am suffering a long-term battle with my own self-confidence and most days it is a battle just to find one thing I remotely like about myself, and a lot of the time, I am pretty sure it shows.
I have come to the conclusion no matter somebody else thinks of you, it’s only going to stick if you believe it yourself. That’s why insults and negativity stick around for so long as it feels like a confirmation of what we think of ourselves. I do all of these things that make me feel good about myself, like dying my hair, buying cool new ‘edgy’ clothes and even getting piercings and tattoos, and to me, I feel on top of the world when I am being me. But it can only last so long, and then I come back to earth with a big bang.
“Your words are powerful, be careful how you speak to yourself.”
Weight gain is something that has held me back for the last few years, I’ve avoided taking photos of myself, especially full body ones like the plague. The idea of standing in front of a camera and letting someone else take photos of me is a foreign concept to me. But since I had my hair recoloured and received some cool new tees from Truffle Shuffle. I felt a boost of confidence and with the sun shining I decided to take a leap of faith and created an alien-esq vibe makeup look and headed outside to take the shots. For me with previous photos I have done, I try to be someone I am not, and end up pulling all of these fake smiles and standing like I was trying to be a doll and the look just didn’t work for me. So I went for the more edgy vibe that I do somewhat well and actually found 5 shots that I was happy with out of the many we took. For me, that’s a result. I saw 5 photos that I wanted to edit, keep and upload.
It’s true what they say, we are our own biggest critiques and getting over this hurdle can be pretty much impossible for a lot of us. But from what I’ve learnt it’s about taking those smaller steps and soon these will grow into bigger steps that are stepping stones to becoming the person you want to be.
You’ve gotta believe in yourself and that’s where the journey starts!
