Love Yourself

What does the title of the article make you think?

You may think I’m out of my mind, “Who don’t love themselves?”

Before diving into the topic, let me ask you these questions:

Do you think you are good looking?

Do you think you are smart?

Do you think you are a good speaker (especially for fellow toastmasters)?

If there is a no in your responses, you don’t love yourself, at least not enough.

Earlier this month, I gave an impromptu 8 - minute speech for the Area C Toastmaster Contest as a test speaker. “Loving yourself” was the topic I spoke about.

To me, I enjoy speaking from the heart instead of reciting from a script. I love telling my own stories. That is to say, I don’t have a draft for that speech at all. Now, I’m writing it out for the first time. Read on if you want to find out more about loving yourself.

I will share with you 3 stories of mine on how I learned to love myself.

Story #1: Chubby Cheeks

When I was in my early 20s, I had the perfect chubby cheeks. I weight about 15 IB more than I do now, but I hated my weight and thought I was ‘fat’. I’ve always wanted to lose that extra 10 – 15 LB so I can have a slimmer looking face. As I’m getting older, pounds start to slip off my body and my facial contour become slimmer over the years. Now I’ve developed sharp features on my face. You can even see my checks bones that portray a chiseled look like those of the fashion models and actresses. (I don’t even need bronzer to draw facial contour with because mine is all naturally developed.)

You might think I’m happy with the way I look. I got lots of compliments from young girls on my cheekbones: “I like your face. It looks very fashionable just like some actresses and models!” Unfortunately this made me feel a bit miserable. Looking at my sharp facial features in the mirror every morning, I started to miss my chubby cheeks when I was 23. The chubbiness now becomes what I’m dying for.

For the past year, I’ve been seeking ways to restore my facial volume. I went through countless filler creams, anti-aging treatments, even LPI laser. Despite the effort, nothing helped me much. Finally, I learned to accept my slimmer facial structure. Once accepted, I start to love the way I look now.

Lesson Learn:

There is no such thing called “the right look”. People tend to desire what they don’t have. The fact is, your look change over time and it never stays the same. Learn to love the way you look at the moment, and embrace the imperfection because we are products of the nature. We are imperfectly perfect in the way we are.

Story #2: Mind Transformation

Have you noticed the type of language you use upon yourself? Do you use mostly positive ones or the negative ones?

Can you imagine someone who’s 5 feet 7 and weights 110 lb would call herself ‘fat’? I was that person. Every time when I looked at myself in the mirror in the gym after the workout session, I said to myself silently: “You are fat as hell. ”

In addition to my weight, I blamed myself for my mistake and called myself “stupid”. Unconsciously, I criticized myself with negative words for not meeting my expectation. Overtime, I became easily frustrated by small things. This finally came to a stop on my birthday last year.

A friend of mine took me out for a birthday dinner. We haven’t seen each other for quite awhile, and we had a lot to catch up. During the hangout, he heard me described myself with mostly negative connotations. He said to me: “why you put yourself down?” I looked at him confusedly and asked him how.

He looked into my eyes and said: “When you talked about yourself, you used lots of negative word. This is a sign that you don’t love yourself. I can’t understand why someone like you who’s pretty and smart would have self-esteem issue. Remember, mind is so powerful that it transfers the type of energy you put in to your each cell in your body. If you constantly put yourself down, the negative energy would enter your body, penetrate your cells and you eventually would become the way you talk. Likewise, if you speak positively about yourself, the positivity would flow in and you will became the one you desire.

From that day, I started to work on the language I used upon myself. Transformation is an on-going process, and I’m still working on it everyday up until now.

And… that guy friend is now my boyfriend.

Lesson Learned:

You became your own language. I’ve come a long way since that day, growing from someone who had self-esteem issue to a confident and positive person.

Story #3: Never Second Guess Yourself

I used to hate my voice and accents. I spent an hour everyday to polish my English pronunciation before I could confidently have conversation with others. I even told Grant, the organizer of the Chinook Toastmaster Club where I’m a member of, that I hated my voice. Grant found me a voice coach, Irish Talbot (a well-known former singer and actresses, and real estate genius).

Working with Iris improved my voice projection dramatically, but I still hated my voice. Despite I’ve come a long way since day one thanks to her training, I still felt unconfident about my voice. The doubt hadn’t gone away.

The ongoing doubt is killing me inside. Every time I talked to those people who looked confident and sounded fluent, I started to cringe and felt my tongue was weirdly twisted. I felt so small standing in front of them as if I didn’t know English at all. Why? It was because I subconsciously told myself that English was my second language, I was lack of vocabularies, sentence structures skills, and had a Chinese accent. In conclusion, I told myself that I was not a good speaker, or at least not good enough.

One day, I came to a realization that all the thoughts I had on myself were not real. These were the negativities that I chose to put into my mind. Those unwanted thoughts act like toxins, preventing me from progressing. So I did a test: I wanted to see if I could change the way I spoke simply by changing my thought process.

I decided to give a raw speech on the toastmaster speech project. Instead of being thoroughly prepared, I structured my thoughts around the topic, and planned to test out my impromptu ability right on the spot. When my name was called upon by the toastmaster, I said to myself: “Your audience were babies who knew nothing at all. You own the stage and you are awesome.” The outcome? The speech blew their minds, and they told me that I looked so natural and it was the best speech I’ve given so far.

It’s not that I don’t know English well. It’s because I didn’t believe I am a great speaker. I stopped second guessing myself from then on. If you second-guess yourself, it does not only hurt your abilities to succeed but also shows that you don’t love yourself.

Lesson Learned:

It’s all in the mind. When thinking positively, your performance will improve dramatically. You may experience instant improvement (in my case).

After reading my stories, do you think you love yourself at all, or love yourself enough? Love yourself is a project that needs everyone’s effort. It’s a continuous learning journey for those who look for self-improvement.

When you hear a voice of doubt in your mind, remember these three things:

1. You are imperfectly perfect just the way you are

2. Use positive words upon yourself

3. Change your thought process to the positive.

Before you can love yourself, others won’t; before loving yourself, you won’t achieve what you want in life; before you permit the self love, you won’t live your lives to the fullest potential.

Thanks for reading