If you were your best friend, what kind of a friend would you be?

In a perfect world, we all would have the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime kind of friendship with ourselves that we do with our closest friends. We would be supportive, understanding, and loyal. Our love for ourselves would be unconditional. We would be forgiving and non-judgmental.

Unfortunately for a lot of us, our relationship with ourselves is hardly one of friendship. It’s one that we wouldn’t want to keep if it’d be with another person.

We are constantly belittling ourselves in different ways.

“I wish I were prettier, he would have noticed me.”

“That dress would never look good on me, I’m too fat.”

“I can’t talk to them, they’ll think I'm weird.”

No matter what comes to mind, we all struggle with the “enoughs.” We are all never enough of something. It’s no wonder we all struggle to accept ourselves when everything around us is encouraging us not to.

What’s “perfect” is constantly being shown to us in a number of ways. It’s impossible to avoid what we are “supposed” to be when it’s being shoved down our throats in every facet of our lives.

To make matters worse, these attributes are often difficult or impossible to obtain. How are we supposed to be skinny, but also have large hips and an even larger booty to match?

There’s no way I and many, many others will ever have the kind of body that we’re supposed to strive for. It’s just not physically possible. So does that mean that the large majority of people should dislike themselves and write themselves off as ugly? Should everyone look in the mirror and be disgusted by what is looking back at them? I don’t buy that.

Why should someone have to feel badly about themselves for being different than what's "normal?"

What happenened to the days of our childhood when we learned how to be nice, respectful, and allow everyone to feel included? It's time we relearned this as adults and started to actually practice what we preach. If we want to feel better about ourselves, the first step is helping others to feel the same.

What happens when someone does love themselves?

They are judged for being self-centered or narssastic. Since when did it become wrong to feel good about the people we are? Why is it wrong to be confident in the people we are? And most importantly, why are we stopping each other from getting to this point?

Maybe we aren’t enough for someone else, but why is it that we can’t be enough for ourselves?

Why is it that we struggle to feel comfortable in the skin that is so uniquely ours? The brains with abilities to construct thoughts so profoundly ours?

You are more than what you have been lead to believe about yourself.

You are beautiful. You are special. And most importantly, you are you. And you are the only you.

There isn't anyone who is exactly the same as you and that is where your true beauty lies. It's not in making yourself into a carbon copy of something else; it's in having the courage to be completely yourself in a world that's always telling you to do the complete opposite.

So go ahead, you're more than welcome to love yourself; every unique, beautiful, and special part of you.