Self Love #1: Look in the mirror

 Have you ever been told you are too hard on yourself?

I am plus sized. I for awhile hated the way I looked particularly my face and my hair. I learned to love my face and my hair because I didn't actually look as bad as I thought. I actually looked good. People have told me I'm beautiful both inside and out. That felt good! One of the things that led me to love my looks is that a lot of people tell me I look just like my mom. I'm in my 30s and my mom is older now but she doesn't look her age at all. She looks in her 40s and she is almost 70! I love my Mom. She is my favorite person in the whole world. I couldn't possibly think myself ugly when people thought I look just like my favorite person in the whole world!

My mom is beautiful inside and out as well. She should probably be made a living saint! She has a big heart and no matter what she has always loved me and looked out for me. Her and I have so many phone calls each day, sometimes she calls me just to tell me she saw one of my goldfinches! I also call her to tell her I heard a cardinal, which is one of her fave birds!

Despite now thinking myself beautiful, there is definitely a lot of room for improvement with my self worth and self esteem. I can be quite egotistical at times but I don't mean to be self absorbed. I do feel like a sack of shit sometimes and me trying to be larger than life and the life of the party is how I make myself feel better. My low self esteem and lack of self love (a healthy sense of self love) has made a mess of things in my life. It causes me to, for example, overbuy things. I work a minimum wage job but I am usually able to in my life save up quite quickly when I hit a slump. Things are a little difficult these days. I have compulsions around spending, which really messes up my hard work. I believe the compulsions are rooted in a self hatred. It's a vicious snowball, but I believe, and so does my therapist, that I can overcome my self hatred and control my spending really well once and for all.

My therapist has said a few times in the 12 years I have been talking to him that a good exercise for self love is to look into a mirror and tell yourself nice things to your reflection. I have a hard time loving myself but I am going to challenge you and myself to look in the mirror! And if it helps, write down three things each day that you like about yourself! Do this in addition to what I call the grateful game, which is something my older sister and I did for a little bit years ago. You don't need to send your things you are grateful to anyone, publish them online, etc. You can just write down both these lists in a journal. I say three things as a minimum to challenge yourself. You'd be surprised what you see! It's ok to a few times a week to have similar grateful/ nice things to say about yourself.

Anyways, I'll be back sometime with another post in this series!

curlyalicia