To self-doubt and to myself,

I am beautiful; I am strong; I am smart; I am one of a kind. This is what I need to remind myself of every day.

There are good days and there are bad, but no matter the day, I have the ability to make it better. Sometimes I look at myself and only see imperfections; only see what is wrong with me and what should be fixed. These days happen more than not, where I think I am not good enough, I am not smart enough, and I am not pretty enough. I compare myself to people around me. I think of how they are so much better than me, when inside they could be struggling with these same feelings.

Who defines pretty? Who decides someone is prettier than someone else? I have always been one to focus on what others have rather than what I have been blessed with. On days when I doubt myself, I take for granted my health, family, and friends. Those days, more often than not, I am consumed by my own mental struggle that I can't appreciate the small moments that make life great. There is a moment when I choose to shut down rather than break this mental hold I have over myself. This is the moment that self-doubt and lack of confidence wins. This is the moment I lose a little bit of myself.

Self-doubt has caused my relationships with the most important people in my life to be altered and not for the better; close to ruined in a few cases. Knowing this I have the ability to not allow self-doubt to consume me. I have the ability to challenge those negative thoughts and remind myself of the woman I want to be. I can look at those relationships and know that I am not alone, that I am loved, and that I am capable. Capable of being confident in myself. Capable of stopping those negative thoughts by embracing only positive ones. I am capable of removing that self-doubt from my daily life.

Some days are good and some days are bad, but its how I choose to change those bad days into good ones that shows my true strength. When I look in the mirror from now on, I choose to not let those imperfections bring me down and cause self-doubt. I choose to embrace that I am one of kind, I am me.

So to self-doubt, I only have one thing to say:

I choose me. I choose to love myself and be myself and not worry what you or any one else may think. I am strong, smart, and capable of whatever I choose to be and that is someone who embraces imperfections and those little moments that make life great.