In an technological age that is as advanced as ours, the importance of staying connected with others and building relationships is emphasized every second. Who you are as a person is represented by how many people you know, what people you know, how many likes you have, what you're tweeting about, etc.
But, do people ever bother to just look at you? Do they ignore all these connections you have and just look at you? It just becomes harder to believe that you, by yourself, have something to offer to the world when everything about us is measured by how sociable we are.
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However, it's important to fall in love with yourself. That sounds very narcissistic, but it's not. It's all about realizing that you have your own self-worth outside how many likes your profile picture gets on Facebook. It's realizing that before you get involved in another friendship or another romantic relationship, you have to be content with yourself.
We hear everyone around us saying, "Take care of yourself," but do we really take that advice? How often do we think about things we like about ourselves? It's human nature to focus on the negatives about our lives, often forgetting that some people have it worse than us and that there are a lot of positives about us too.
Every time we go through a hard situation, we are told "it's going to be fine." But, do we believe it ourselves?
So, how can we fall in love with ourselves?
1) Every time we are stressed, we should think about how we have gotten past other hard situations and still survived. This reminds us that most of our problems are not the end of the world, even if we think they are, and also that we are much stronger than we realize.
2) Think of one positive personality characteristic you have every morning. Every morning is chaotic in the sense that we as college students have a gazillion things to do and worry about. Sometimes, we skip meals, don't exercise enough, pull all-nighters, stuff ourselves with junk food, etc. And, sometimes, that makes us feel shitty. So, when morning comes and you're ready to just get back in bed instead of marching off to that 8:30 class, remind yourself about something good that you like about yourself. For example, "I'm stressed as fuck right now, but I also am super funny." It seems silly to even try something like this, but as soon as your brain gets conditioned to focus on the positives, it will help so much, I promise!
3) Stop comparing yourself to other people. This is easier said than done, especially in a country and educational system where competition is used to rank people all the time, allowing some to have better rewards and opportunities than others. It's easy to feel shitty about yourself when a friend has so many more internships than you or is getting a 4.0 this semester, but we often forget that when no one's life is peach-perfect all the time. Just because our friends don't share all the negative stuff going in their lives doesn't mean there aren't things not going well for them. So, why does it make sense to compare ourselves with our peers or classmates? Again, your worth should not be dependent on comparison to someone else's. Realize that you have already accomplished a lot in your life by making it this far, and you can go on for even longer.
At the end of the day, there are so many more ways to really fall in love with yourself. It's different for everybody, but I think we can all agree that we sometimes forget to focus on ourselves and forget how important we are.
As midterm season continues and finals start popping up, focus on falling in love with yourself and you will have a much easier time dealing with stress, I promise!
