Life asks a lot of us. It's not all bad, but it's no walk in the park either. We go through so much and learn so much about ourselves and those around us that sometimes it can be overwhelming. We get so caught up in images and expectations that at some point we look in the mirror and we aren't sure who is looking back. We become this person, but we don't really know them. It's not us, so when did it become us? How did we let this happen? I've been there. I realized that somewhere along the way I forgot about the person I needed the most — myself. I let life push my needs and my feelings into a corner, but not anymore. This year things are going to be different. This year I've decided to be selfish, and I think you should, too.

Being selfish doesn't mean you walk around with a better-than-everyone attitude, it just means that you're not ignoring yourself anymore. It can be so easy to put the needs of others before your own, though I'm not saying you never should. I'm just saying the hard part is remembering to take care of yourself, too. You'll start to let things slide, let lines blur, and piece by piece you'll start to lose yourself. More often than not, you spend too much time dwelling on what others think of you and what others think you should be doing rather than focusing on what you think of yourself and what you think you should be doing. You forget that you're just as important and the person next to you and that you have needs, too. It's time we start choosing ourselves, because I think we deserve just as much of a chance as anyone.

Be selfish in your friendships. I'm sure we have all sat through our fair share of midnight-venting sessions. You hold them, feed them, give them some advice and a glass of wine, and eventually they decide they're going to be okay. Granted, they'll probably only actually use ten percent of the golden wisdom you just gave them, but at least you tried. But the question is, could we take our own advice? Are we really in a position to be giving advice in the first place? It's hard to help someone when you're struggling just as much as they are. It's like trying to build a birdhouse with a broken hammer. I mean, I've never tried it, but I feel like it wouldn't work out very well. At some point, you have to put your happiness first.

Which brings me to dating. Be selfish in your love life. Coming from someone who has been there before, I know what it's like to lose yourself. You get so caught up in the other person that you suffer in the wake of it without even knowing. You make all these sacrifices and time for each other, and yeah I guess that's what love is, but if they don't fill the void left behind by giving those pieces away, then you're just left with a hole. It's okay to love someone more than yourself, but you have to find someone who will love you more than themselves, too. So until then, guard your heart. Don't just give it away to the first person to tell you that you have great eyes. Show yourself the love that you deserve so that when the time comes, you'll know what to expect from someone who claims to love you.

Something happens when you become selfish. All of a sudden you have options. You have opportunities you didn't know you had. You have things to explore you didn't know you could. You have a new sense of purpose, and that's yourself. You can do anything because there is nothing holding you back. So explore. Go learn things you didn't know before. Find things that make you happy. Focus on your career and your education, I mean we do pay enough for it, after all. Allow yourself to be the best version of you that you can be. Happiness is a contagious thing and once people see that in you, they'll want it, too. So choose yourself. Be selfish — go ahead, I won't judge you.