“You may be the only person left who believes in you, but its enough. It takes just one star to pierce a universe of darkness. Never give up.”- Richelle Goodrick

Nobody tells you it is okay to call yourself beautiful, it is okay to smile at mirrors, and it is perfectly fine to say your own eyes are pretty.

It is wonderful to love your waist and your legs regardless of their size and you are not conceited if you use your fingers to list everything you’re good at, rather than point at all your own flaws.

You can acknowledge you’re smart and that you will go places and you will be someone greater than your mistakes. You can’t always expect other people to believe in yourself for you.

Over time, people whom you once were close to seem to fade out. It’s not always because you ended on bad terms, but sometimes life just gets busy and we are left working through things on our own. New relationships form, and yet sometimes it feels like life is just all over the place.

We work hard for ourselves to get us where we need to go because people won’t do it for us. We look at opportunities in front of us and determine what is the best course of action for us to take. We work hard because the belief we have had to develop in ourselves is what often keeps us going in the first place.

While it is nice to know that there are people out there in our lives who would do just about anything for us, sometimes self discovery and perseverance pushes us to do so much more.

I know that there will always be people around me cheering me on in the background, but I have had to learn to not only earn the things I wanted, but also believe in myself to obtain them.

We all know that people will let us down, if all we have is faith in them alone. If we don’t find some moment to see ourselves the way God does, we are in trouble. We would be so carried away with comparing ourselves to others that we would fail to see the good we had right in front of us.

There are a lot of lessons in my life where I learned the value of pushing through and making things work. I had to believe that I can do it and that I am worth it during the hard moments of school and in the failure of lost relationships. I had to learn to heal, too. It is a process of trusting what people say about my self worth to be true, and then choosing to believe it and put it into active practice.

Was this an easy process? By all means, no. Self belief is the hardest thing ever because we sometimes feel we are going to crumble. We sometimes feel that the very world around is breaking and we aren’t sure how we will make it out.

Believing in myself is a process I still work on today. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing. Being away from friends and family is tough. I know that they will always be cheering for me, but I feel alone sometimes. I know my best friend and mom are always just a phone call away, but it is still lonely. I have to believe that although my finances are scattered and if I can pass an exam, that I can! Is it hard being my own cheerleader? Well, sure it is--- but it is humbling. It has pushed me to work harder at obtaining all the things I want to do.

Because of all I have had to endure, I don’t take work lightly. I don’t look down upon those who have plenty or those who have barely anything. I know what it feels like to feel like I have nothing at all. And even more so, I respect people who are unsure of themselves, but pick themselves up anyway. I try not to take anything for granted because I have been on both sides of it all.

My grandma always says, “Attitude is everything." She always seemed to tell me this when I was mad about something, so I would always just roll my eyes. But truly, she could not be more right. If I have a good attitude towards myself, I can truly set my mind right. I can believe in myself and accomplish anything I am willing to work hard for.

I want YOU to believe in yourself, too! You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.”—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.