Do you really love yourself?

What does ingratitude towards yourself look like?

I think it looks like this…

You focus on your aesthetic to feel better about your internal conversation.

You live loud with everything you do and possess because you’re concerned about how others perceive you.

You beat yourself up in private, but present yourself as confident and bold in public.

You over compensate to make space for people who treat you as an option, but go out of your way to exclude people who have high expectations of you.

You comfort yourself by preempting how others may judge you by telling yourself that they don’t know what you’ve been through.

You withhold your contribution of support or assistance if you don’t think others deserve it.

Your internal conversation is harsh resulting in health issues that you then use to seek pity from those around you for your self-imposed struggle.

You try to save others from your opinion of their lives believing that you’re doing it because you’re a good person, while not realising that you’re projecting your struggle onto them so that you can feel valued.

You take your time and your comforts for granted, always procrastinating on your own goals but over investing in assisting others to achieve their goals.

You see self-sacrifice without healthy boundaries as a virtuous way of life, and lose sight of the impact of such behaviour on your health and wellbeing, and on those who care about you.

If you find yourself growing angry or agitated at this list, chances are, you are feeling judged or attacked.

That’s a clear sign of how much the opinions of others about you holds more weight than your opinion of yourself.

A healthy self-worth is not a narrative. It’s not an internal dialogue. Nor is it a set of tools or methods.

A healthy self-worth is a state of being, and is only recognised in hindsight.

It is only through reflecting on how we handled situations that we are able to consciously determine if that is true to who we are or not.

If not, we focus on understanding what drove us towards such behaviour so that we become aware of the reasons for our behaviour rather than simply judging ourselves for behaving in that way.

Awareness is the critical step towards self improvement.

And self improvement is impossible if every piece of criticism or negative feedback makes you defensive.