For the first official post of 2016, I wanted to highlight something I feel very strongly about. As an adolescent, as a teenager, as a young woman, I suffered from an insidious type of thievery: comparing myself to others. It was a sickness. I even, at times, compared myself to myself. As in sizing myself up and determining that the person I was in that present was worse than the person I was in the past. Again, a sickness. Negative, toxic, terrible to myself. But when you don’t feel that you’re enough, it’s what you do. It didn’t happen overnight, of course, but thank goodness for the moment This Square Peg realized that not only was she enough, but she was everything. In other words: I’m incomparable. And so are you.
Don’t let that thief in. Look in your mental mirror (even a physical mirror, if you have to) and find you, not anyone else. Find just the beauty inside, not the flaws and inadequacies that seem to jump out quicker. When the flaws ultimately manifest themselves, because they will, smile at those pesky things. Laugh at them if you need to. I don’t diminish the personal goals we all need to set for ourselves, the self-improvement we all choose to do in life, but let those things be yours alone. If others must come into our minds in terms of what they’re doing with their lives, admire them. Make them your cheerleaders. But focus on you, and do that quickly, before that little voice starts making you believe that you’re not enough. Find the joy that comes from wholly knowing that no one can compare to you.
This Square Peg. 