Loving Yourself When Society Doesn't Want You To
I went to the beach this past weekend with my Dad and it was the first ever beach vacation that I didn't spend weeks preparing for. I didn't limit my food in take or workout a crazy amount just to have a "bikini body." I do still have bad body image days but I have grown to love my body the way that it is. I no longer feel the need to cover up or "fix" the way that I look. It's really freeing to feel that way.Realizing this got me to thinking back to the days when I was dancing. I have always been a fairly confident person. Maybe not in my body but I knew that I was a good dancer. I was always pretty picky with guys and friends. In high school, I constantly was told that I was cocky, arrogant, and thought I was better than everyone. It never really got to me because I never saw it as a bad thing but looking back, it subconsciously made me project myself as smaller. I was scared to step into my full power because I thought people would view me as cocky.
If you think about it, we live in a society that preaches self care and self love but what happens when someone actually loves themselves?
They are cocky. They are entitled. They think they are better than everyone. No, they just know their self worth.Coming to college felt like a fresh start for me. People didn't know me so they wouldn't view me as arrogant if I didn't let them see that side of me. This led me to act smaller than I am. I stopped putting myself out there. I stopped embracing who I was 100%. I stopped doing all the little self care things I used to love: dressing up, face masks, and spending a little too much money at Sephora.I let go of a lot of the materialistic things that made me feel so good about myself because I didn't necessarily want the world to know that I loved myself. And this led me to feeling like crap in my own body.
I didn't feel like my own person.
We all should know by now that I have been working on cultivating this self love in the past year. I'm actually glad I let go of a lot of the material things because it forced me to work on inner love before I brought back all the outer things.I have worked really hard to be the person that I am today. I have worked really hard to take steps to fully love and accept every single part of myself. I am proud of that. I am not going to hide the fact that I love who I am because it's a really admirable thing, don't you think?[video width="720" height="720" mp4="https://naturallynicoletta.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_4678.mp4"][/video]That means posting silly videos of me running on the beach or dancing with pizza or just posting more selfies. I'm posting that for me...well, the compliments are nice BUT it's still for me. This also means accepting compliments and saying THANK YOU rather than saying things like "oh, no it's nothing!" and just brushing it off. I am making a conscious decision to step in to my power and embrace the love that I have for myself.People might view it as being cocky. People may think I'm better than everyone. But I see it as power. As strength. As a truly beautiful thing.Don't let anyone make you think that loving yourself is a bad thing. It's hard to achieve but once you get there, it's magic. You are unique and beautiful and strong and intelligent. There is a space in this Universe just for you, remember that.