Picture this: You wake up feeling like you want to go the extra mile when getting ready for the day. You pick out the perfect casual yet well put together outfit and go through your normal morning routine. Maybe you decide to do something a little extra with your hair that day and put on some “natural” looking makeup.

You’re feeling confident, and you’re ready to walk out the door to embrace a brand new day. But then you pass by the mirror. You pause to look at yourself, scanning every inch from head to toes. All you see is imperfection. You think about how maybe if you hadn’t eaten that extra cookie last night that maybe you could love yourself a little more today. That maybe you’re jeans wouldn’t have looked as tight as you perceive them to look.

You immediately turn red, thinking about how ridiculous it is that you tried so hard to look and feel good and quickly change into leggings and a t-shirt.

What reflects back at you is not beauty and confidence, it’s imperfection and flaws.

It’s so easy to let these insecure thoughts flood your mind and consume you, and it's even easier to forget that what you see in the mirror is not true.

For years, I let this eat away at my confidence. I let others walk all over me and allowed myself to feel so negatively about who I was physically and mentally. What I lacked in confidence was made up for in insecurity.

It became incredibly difficult to not notice the imperfections all over my body and within my character. By the end of high school, I realized that I needed to make a change before heading off to college. I wanted so badly to be an entirely new and confident person. I wanted to find a way to love myself on my own.

I decided that needed to stop being so hard on myself and to tell myself that I am good enough. It was time to celebrate my little victories instead of putting them down and telling myself that I could have done better. Instead of looking in the mirror and focusing on all the flaws that seemed so prevalent to me, I started looking at the things I loved about myself.

At first, it seemed kind of ridiculous to do this. It felt unnatural to focus on the positives in the mirror instead of emphasizing the negatives after having done this for years. The first step to change is never easy, especially when it involves patching up your insecurities. But believe me when I say that it changed my life and the way that I look at myself.

I'm not telling you that this is an easy fix or an overnight process. Even after a year of doing this, I still have some bad days, but I can honestly say that I am a completely different person from who I was before leaving for college. It has become easier and easier each day to find things that I love about myself when I pass by that mirror in the morning.

If you start looking at the good instead of the bad today, you might just see something that you love tomorrow.