There's a new trend that seems to be taking the world by storm. What is this new craze you may ask? The answer is self-deprecation. There are so many people in my life that deprecate themselves in some way. Whether it's calling yourself trash or pointing out your flaws, self-deprecation is taking over our daily lives.

Frankly, that's kind of scary to me. We live in a society where we not only criticize others, but criticize ourselves too. When I make a simple mistake, I instinctively start talking down on myself. I say things like "I'm the worst I'm sorry" or "I'm sorry I'm literally trash." When I look in the mirror, instead of looking at everything I'm doing right and everything I've achieved, I look at all the things I'm doing wrong and what I could be doing better. Why? We all make mistakes, right? Why do we feel this constant need to talk badly about ourselves? Don't we deserve as much respect from ourselves as do from our family and friends? The answer is yes. You do.

The reason I've been thinking about this is because I recently realized something. I noticed that I always have nice things to say about the people in my life, but I seldom have anything good to say about myself. Sometimes it's genuinely hard for me to list off my good qualities. When people pay me a compliment such as "wow you look really pretty today!" or "hey congratulations on putting on an awesome event!" I kind of shrug it off because I think they're just saying it to be nice. I genuinely under-appreciate myself and all the accomplishments that I've made in my life and I don't like that at all.

Having that kind of thought process can be detrimental to your self-esteem and confidence. You need to love and appreciate your mind, body, and spirit just as much as much as you appreciate the people you have in your life. I realize this is no easy task, but it's not impossible either. All you need to do is get the ball rolling.

One of the things that has helped me a lot with this is asking myself this simple question: would I ever say this about any of my friends or family? By asking yourself how someone would feel if you, hypothetically, called them trash or another obscenity, it shows how hurtful you're being. Just because you're being mean to yourself doesn't make it okay. Mean is mean no matter how you spin it.

Another helpful thing I've been doing is asking why I feel bad about an aspect of myself. For instance, in recent years I've been hypercritical of my physical appearance and at times it really took it's toll. Pointing out all of my flaws instead of highlighting all the things that make me unique really got me down on myself. Since I began asking myself why I felt and continue to feel this way, I discovered things about myself that I never knew before! This newly gained knowledge has helped me address the problems I've been having in a constructive way as opposed to beating myself up. Now after asking myself this question, I dress, exercise, and eat in ways that make me comfortable in my own skin! I still have dashes of insecurity, but this definitely helped to boost my

I guess to sum things up, everyone deserves respect from others, but you also deserve respect from yourself. Being critical of yourself is good in moderation, but remember you're only human. We all make mistakes and nobody is perfect. You have so much to give so don't let anyone, including yourself, tell you otherwise.