Poet Marisa Donnelly urges us to stop trying to «fix» and fix ourselves. She advises to realize your true worth and love yourself unconditionally.
Sometimes a strange idea pops into my head. We decide that the best way to take care of ourselves is to constantly work on ourselves and improve ourselves. Despite the achievements, we cannot believe in our own worth. We say that we did not realize the potential. Despite our best efforts, we continue to convince ourselves that we are not good enough. There is no way we can get recognition — first of all, from ourselves.
We think that loving yourself means correcting shortcomings, becoming better and stronger, approaching the ideal. We ourselves create unrealistic expectations, and then wonder why we are unhappy and dissatisfied with life. We believe that we must improve ourselves in order to earn some love and recognition. But this is a mistake, we are not broken things and do not need to be fixed.
Of course, there will be a lot of pain and defeat in life. We will hurt those who love us and let down those who mean the most to us. There will be many tears, there will be moments when we start to hate the reflection in the mirror.
We are not perfect, we will never do enough by the unattainable standards of the world and we will not be able to improve life one hundred percent.
But you should not spend your life in pursuit of an unattainable ideal. There is no need to give up happiness and peace and waste time to patch up the «gaps» in yourself. We are not perfect, and that’s fine. We are valuable in ourselves — such as we are.
Stop trying to fix yourself. You are not a broken toy on a shelf or an old car in a garage.
I am not saying that you need to stop working on yourself altogether. But often we dwell on what we do not have. We are consumed by thoughts of unconquered peaks, and we forget who we really are. We focus on what we want to change about ourselves and forget about our unconditional worth.
Try to accept yourself whole, with all the shortcomings, and love will help you become stronger. Don’t consider yourself a failure because of the mistakes made along the way. The main thing is to learn to learn from them. Self-love, acceptance, and self-improvement is a never-ending process. There should be a light inside that will maintain a positive attitude and move forward. But from time to time you need to stop in order to appreciate yourself and your achievements.
Stop trying to fix yourself. You are not a broken toy on a shelf or an old car in a garage, you are just a person with your own strengths and weaknesses, but that does not mean that you do not deserve love. Not perfect, but that doesn’t mean you’re missing something.
Remember what you have overcome. These events made you who you are today. Everyone has moments of defeat, dissatisfaction with the soul and body. But when you achieve something, do not devalue yourself and the path that you have traveled. This is not an easy journey, you should be proud of it.
Source: Thought Catalog.