If there's one thing that I have learned in my years on this Earth, it's that I am my worst critic. I've come to terms that I am my worst enemy... and it sucks.

I've dealt with self-confidence issues my whole life, and even though I'm 21 now, when people compliment me, I still find whatever they say hard to believe. I'll walk into class and one of my friends will go, "Lexi, you look so cute today!" and I'll look at them and say, "I mean, all I did was just roll out of bed and put this on." Or there will be a scenario where I'm in one of my video or photography classes and we'll be critiquing and everyone will look at mine and they'll think it's great, while in my head I'm constantly going, "this isn't even good, why do you all think my work is so amazing? Because it isn't."

I'm not saying that I don't like myself. I love myself—and no I'm not being conceited. I love who I am and who I've become. I love the woman I am today. I've just been trying to learn how to deal with myself and to not be so hard on the things I do. I've come to the realization that it dates back to the fact I want to make my parents proud of me. I know that they are and always have been. Yeah, I've had my number of slip-ups and mishaps—and I'm still having them—but they've never stopped being proud of their little girl. I want to continue to make them proud. I want to show them that I'm doing alright.

I had become so critical of the things I would do because I want to make sure it's perfect, but in the end I would still think that it looked like literal garbage. The clothes that I would wear: I would attempt to be cute and try different fashions, but I would always think about how my friends would look better than me, so whenever someone said I looked good, I wouldn't believe them. This still happens to me on the regular and I'm getting better at not being so uptight about compliments and being hard on myself whenever I do something. I realized that it wasn't healthy for me, so I needed to change the mindset that I had.

In a sea of people, you will always be the one to be the most critical, the most nit-picky and self-conscious. It's a tough thing to deal with, but it gets easier in the end. I have my moments where honestly, I don't feel like anything I do is every good enough, but I'm learning that sometimes, it's OK if what you're doing is different. It's OK if what you're doing is not perfect and it's definitely OK if what you're doing is not up to someone else's standards. Because like I said in the beginning, you are your worst enemy and critic, but you're also the one who knows yourself best.