Life After Undergrad: Love yourself like you mean it

Three words, eight letters, say it like you mean it. No, Iā€™m not talking about telling your kids or significant other that you love them every chance you get (though you should because life is short). No, Iā€™m talking about reminding yourself that you love who you are unapologetically, every day. Self-love is the foundation for every other type of love we have in our lives, and itā€™s arguably the most important. For years in our adolescents (and sometimes beyond) we critiqued everything about our appearance, tried to be thinner, more athletic, have better skin, and so on; but now weā€™re adults and how many of us can say those habits havenā€™t followed us far into our 20s? I can admit that it followed me, and haunted me brutally after I had my daughter Ava, I couldnā€™t understand why I got such bad stretch marks, why I didnā€™t ā€œsnap backā€ and why that baby weight hung around for 10 months.

In all of this self-doubt we forget to love the good parts, how kind we are, how organized we can be, how good we are at crossword puzzles or Sudoku. Every morning I used to wake up and think of all the things I HAD to do, run through a mental list of these tasks that I had to check off and complete; but more recently Iā€™ve started ignoring that mental list and finding positives like, todayā€™s weather is going to be beautiful, I canā€™t wait to do _______ or just reminding yourself that youā€™ve got this. When you wake up feeling like youā€™ve got a handle on things and not the other way around you just feel better.

Iā€™m far from perfect and I know I have my flaws but Iā€™m slowly learning to turn even those into strengths, Iā€™m learning to share, to let people help and most of all to trust in my abilities and what I can do. I try to face challenges or setbacks with poise and patience and not feel like everything has gone to shit because when I let that feeling of panic take over I ended up creating problems that werenā€™t there to begin with. Everyone has a new year new me goal (if you say you donā€™t- you sir are a liar!) even if they donā€™t broadcast it to the world and you know what; good for you. You owe it to yourself to be the best version of yourself that you know how to beā€”and love the crap out of yourself while doing it!