"Love yourself, respect yourself!"

I have so many drafts I could swim in them if it weren't so cold outside. I've got a new swimsuit and everything.
This one's been stuck in my drafts for a long time. But I've decided to finally just post it.

I've been doing this Choose To Love Yourself challenge and there is a task for you to do for 18 days. They started out simple, like saying the pledge to yourself in the mirror, waking up and deciding this day I will be happy, list all your strengths and tape them to your mirror, ect. And then they became more complex. I'm finding it so much harder to put happy positive thoughts in my head instead of negative ones. That's something that has grown into this gross ugly beast that doesn't want to budge. And something this whole challenge focuses on is your true beauty, loving the body you have been given and accepting your weaknesses as strengths too. That specifically is a hard part of this whole thing. There are things about me that I wish I could change, but I'm learning to love them.

Something else I'm learning about myself while doing this challenge is that all I do everyday is compare myself. Especially to some of my closest friends. That's why I haven't been able to write anything I believe is decent. I see what others write and look at my own work and see flaws. I'm trying to overcome this habit but it's so much harder to do than say. I can wake up and commit myself to being positive and loving myself and then I see something on Instagram or I read something and kick myself. Sometimes I have to turn my phone off completely just so I don't see posts of 'prettier people'. It really shocks me how harsh we are on ourselves.

We were given this link to this Dove video for one of the day assignments. PLEASE WATCH

After watching this video my eyes were opened to the reality of our self criticalness, how cruel we are to ourselves. Especially in the joking, degrading way. It makes me feel sick to think people I love so much have these thoughts about themselves because I can see their true beauty. But then why cant I look at myself and have those same thoughts? It makes me ache.

All I want for you to get from reading this ramble of a post is that your true beauty is so much more powerful and real than you give yourself credit for. Try your hardest to stop the negative thoughts or counterbalance them with positive ones.