By Isabella Rudnick, Youth Ambassador
I believe I have struggled my whole life with my self-image and how I look and appear to others. It has been a challenge and is something I continue to struggle with to this day. When others compliment me, I find it hard to believe the truth in their words. Due to society imposing certain beauty standards, it’s very easy to compare myself to others who seem to fit the perfect, cookie-cutter mold of societal beauty. I talk about this topic often because it is important to separate beauty from worth.
How can comparing beauty to worth affect one's mental health? Some days, I wake up and just feel ugly. When this happens, I find it easy to feel less than, get down on myself, and slip into a depressive state for the day. Learning to separate beauty from worth is crucial because external beauty does not define you as a person. Internally, we must dig deep and work on self-improvement. Once we find the value in loving ourselves, we unlock our true beauty. It is easy to compare yourself to others constantly, but true self-love comes when you accept yourself entirely. Only then can you look in the mirror and genuinely love who you are.
Achieving this mindset may be difficult, but we must avoid focusing on others' opinions. If we do, we will constantly try to mold ourselves into what others expect us to be. What's the point of that if we don’t even love ourselves yet? This is why self-love is crucial to self-perception—no one will love you more than you love yourself. A saying I like to live by is, “You can't pour from an empty cup.” How can you love anyone else if you don't first love yourself?
This is important because self-love affects relationships, life, and our overall connection with people. Never give up on yourself or think you are less than just because of how others perceive you. Your perception of yourself matters the most.
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