This Is The Ultimate Kind Of Love
This world can be such a volatile place if you aren’t sure about who you are or what you stand for. I know for me personally, I have spent a lot of time learning lessons the hard way. I realize that if I had just been a little smarter and more confident in myself and what I deserve, it wouldn’t have had to be that way. Don’t get me wrong, some things really need to be learned in a way that we don’t forget them and I realize that. But I cannot tell you the amount of times someone has warned me about something or someone and I went for it anyway. I had every intention of a different outcome but in the end, exactly what I was warned would happen, happened. It’s kind of like the moment your food is delivered to your table and the waiter tells you that your plate is hot. They can tell you a million times that the plate is hot but sometimes you just have to burn the shit out of your hand and learn the lesson for yourself.
The rule applies especially to romantic relationships. The pursuit of love is often put on a pedestal and seen as the ultimate goal when in reality falling in love with yourself and everything you offer is the ultimate love. When you go into a romantic venture unsure of who you are, you tend to base your self-worth on the opinions of those you want to love you. And at the end of the day, a person’s inability to appreciate you says nothing about you and the person you are or the body you have. It does, however, speak volumes on who they are.
In a lot of ways it boils down to the whole “we accept the treatment we think we deserve” idea. And it’s truer than you realize. When we know our self-worth, we have higher standards for the way we allow people to treat us. This inevitably results in us setting healthy boundaries and living happier lives. When people or situations continuously bring you down or make you feel like anything less than the deserving individual you are, let them go. You are worthy of everything that you dream of having and more. Accepting treatment that is less than what you deserve just postpones you from finding the amazing things that are awaiting you.
Realizing I’ve wasted so much of my precious time and energy prioritizing things that added absolutely no value to my life was a hard pill to swallow. It was the day after my 30th birthday, I was sitting in my friend’s spare bedroom, crying, feeling sad about a series of things when I realized that I was just as much to blame for the things that made me sad. I was giving people power that they sure as hell didn’t deserve. I was allowing others to control how I felt about myself. I had spent my whole life up until that moment trying to impress others when really I should have been working on impressing myself. If there is one thing that’s not going to change, it’s that everyone is going to have an opinion about you or how you choose to live your life. This is inevitable. However, the sooner you learn to stick up for yourself and what you love, the sooner you won’t care about other people’s opinions because you will be too busy enjoying your life. Once you find happiness within yourself; nobody can take it away from you because it’s yours and depends on nobody else. 
