How to love yourself in 3 steps

1. Stop comparing yourself to other people
2. Find something you love and do it every day
3. Look in the mirror every day and tell that hotass staring back at you, ‘damn you look good.’

The single most important lesson in life

90% of my advice could be this: say what you need to say. Yes, that is a John Mayer song. Sorry about that. The truth is, the world would run a whole lot more smoothly if people spoke up.

Open your mouth and say the words, write them down, sign them, send morse code, sing it, do an interpretative dance to it. Say you need help with math or your college choices or depression or friends or your inability to do a cats cradle. Say I like you, or I don’t like you like that, or I’m sorry, or you hurt me. Say you don’t want to go to the college your parents want you to or that you wanna go to assassin school to be a world class hitman or monkey trainer school to work at the circus. (Before you turn this around on me, you never NEED to say that someone is ugly or stupid or their hair looks terrible- unless they’re your best friend and they ask.)

Why? Because your sighing just sounds like you’re deflating. Slamming the room to your door doesn’t explain anything. Glaring doesn’t convey your problem. Your loved ones are watching you, wondering what is wrong, waiting for you to explain it to them. So suck it up, gather your courage, and speak up.

The prettiest girl in the room might have four nipples and a gorilla arm

One of my best friends in the world is pretty much perfect. C is leggy, tall, thin but curvy with always-perfect blond hair and a gorgeous face. You want to hate her but she’s so incredibly genuine and nice, that you love her. She has a dry, self deprecating humor, and she’s super sweet. This is the girl who, on Halloween when I wanted to be a cowgirl, thought I wasn’t decked out enough so she dragged the huge box of Halloween stuff that she thought was neccessary to bring to her very small apartment so she could offer me a sheriff’s badge and the option of two guns (zebra or realistic). Everyone wants to be her, and sometimes when you’re around her, you feel a little insignificant, even though she barely seems to notice that everyone is looking at her.

So we were getting ready to go out and C was wiping her armpits with a towel in an extremely attractive manner so she wouldn’t have to shower when she opened her mouth and said, ‘I was just going to tell you guys something but it’s way too fucking weird.’ Naturally we’re all, ‘tell us more!’ because even though we’re in our early twenties we’re starved for excitement. C smiles, points to her tanktop and goes, ‘have I ever told you guys I have four nipples?’She had not. She goes into the whole story about these little things she noticed when she was a teenager and her doctor said they’re nipples because they’re on her milk line. I was all, ‘what happens when you get pregnant.’ She doesn’t want to know. On a roll, she explains that when she was little a dislocated shoulder never healed right, so she has one arm freakishly longer than the other so she never stands with them both hanging by her side. She says all this with a huge smile on her face, entirely unselfconscious, and that’s when I realizedthat’swhat makes her hot.

Then we all told each other about our weird body things - A has one pointy boob, mine are totally not the same size, C’s middle toe is absurdly longer than all the others. None of us are perfect. Some of us are part gorilla. For all you know, the girl you desperately want to be is staring at your toes thinking, ‘god, her toes are so normal. Why can’t I have them?’

Anonymous asked: How do I make myself FULLY believe that I am worth something after feeling like I wasn't for 11+ years of my life? How do you break out of that kind of mentality when you were born into it & was surrounded by the negativity for so long? I feel like I take a step forward and then get stuck because I don't know how to move beyond that point because I've never known what it's like. So tell me, what's it like on the other side and how do I get there? Jump? Fall?

It’s great on the other side! There are still bad days and sometimes you feel like you’re on the old side. Actually, they aren’t sides at all. Don’t think of it as a physical leap you need to make. It’s a mental choice. That’s right, just a choice. You choose to be happy and love yourself. Does that mean it’ll be easy? No, ma’am. It’ll be hard. It’s a slow, baby-steps sort of process. Every morning you wake up, look in the mirror and say, ‘hot damn, I look good. How has Victoria Secret not hired me yet?’ Even if you don’t believe it, say it anyway. Then get serious and every single day write down one thing you like about yourself, it can be physical or personality, but there should be a good amount of both. Maybe you have great eyes or you can seriously rock bangs. Maybe your legs are awesome and have helped you through a big hike (they haven’t? go for one, accomplishments are big self esteem boosters). Now, your personality. This is all mental and possibly the biggest part. The media is all, ‘boobies, boobies, skinny-waist, you want to be thin!, take this pill, erase those lines, blahblahblah white-wash the world and make sure everyone looks the same.’ Realize what bullshit that is. Do you want to look just like everyone else? No. Mute those commercials and put in your own definition of beauty. Actually think to yourself, or say out loud, strong is beautiful, intelligence is sexy, my laugh is hot as fuck, I help people and that’s remarkable.

Your compassion, your humor, your intelligence, your friendship, your lows and highs and depressions and smiles and lightness and dark all make up one beautifully complicated person that couldn’t possibly be defined by her looks or changed by the media. Just be true to yourself. You’ll have setbacks, but always push forward. Every single day remind yourself of how goddamn lucky the world is to have you in it.

Ending body-bashing from 10 - 100

I know that when most people think about body hate, they focus on preteens, teens, and young adults, but it doesn’t end there. The habits we make when we’re young - smoking, drinking, habitually ignoring emails, and body-hate - last long into our adult years.

Think about it, if someone starts smoking at twelve and never realizes the damage or finds the desire to stop, they’ll smoke well into their adulthood and may very well die from it. Body-hate is the same way. My successful female boss with a great job, long-term marriage, lovely home and fantastic family, hates her body. On a daily basis she calls herself a cow (apparently a size 8US is enormous) and outwardly expresses her guilt over food. It’s almost the only conversation in the office. Every single day successful middle aged, stable women lament their bodies. They call themselves whales and cows while eating Burger King, then talk for the next two hours about how fat they are.

It makes a poisonous environment. I live a healthy life, I happily indulge occasionally in yummy junk food, I work out six days a week and I’m happy with my body. But in there, it makes me want to hate on my own body just to have something to talk about. How do you respond to your boss saying, ‘I’m such a cow,’ all the time? It’s easy to say, ‘I know, I feel like a whale.’

What you should say is, ‘You’re not a cow. None of you are. Bashing yourself won’t get your anywhere. If you want to change your habits, do so, but if not, accept yourself at the size you’re at.’ Then walk away. Shut your mouth. Do not encourage the body bashing and don’t join in. If you do, then you’re staring at your future. You don’t want to be that person.

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Evolutionarily, men like skinny women

I hear this all the time, and it’s totally taken out of context, stripped down to extreme basics, and overhyped. Let’s start by saying that what men/women likeevolutionarilydoesn’t necessarily align with what your average person is into today.

Now lets go on to the statement itself. Men are showed, over time, to prefer a waist to hip ratio of .7 (70%). This is generally defined as curvy. This ratio holds true for all weights and sizes. It is not a number on the scale, it’s a ratio. Now, this isn’t because women with a .7 waist/hip ratio are inherently hotter than other women. This theory is based on the idea that .7 is a good waist/hip ratio for childbirth; everyone has heard of birthing hips. But remember that we are not cavemen. Not all men look at women and have the primal thought, ‘if I have sex with that women with the .7 waist/hip ratio, she’ll have great babies for me.’ I think we all know most men think about kids carefully nowadays.

This is also why women’s makeup tends to mimic ovulation/pregnancy/aliveness glow. Bright cheeks and pink lips indicated that you were not dead or sick or dying. Again, just because men like this evolutionarily doesn’t men any man would kick a snow white porcelain doll beauty out of bed. Also, men are usually attracted to women wearing less at the bar not because they think if you’re baring skin you’re easy, but because women are more likely to wear less when they’re ovulating and emitting pheromones.

Men aren’t the only ones boxed in by their evolutionary past. Evolutionarily, the number one thing women look for is resources. This doesn’t men every woman at the bar is checking out a guys keys so she can see what type of car he drives.

Not all men marry for looks, not all women marry for money. I’ve never heard a man say, ‘eh, her hips aren’t wide enough and her waist isn’t small enough.’ I’ve never heard a girl say, ‘I really love him, but he doesn’t make enough money to support both of us.’

If we all followed evolutionary cues, all women would stay home and protect the fort (which they don’t) and every man would go fight for our food (when’s the last time your husband went to the grocery store?) and women would kick men who couldn’t provide to the curb. Do some women do this? Yes, and it’s terrible, but most women are in it for love, just as most guys aren’t assholes enough to dump a girl for her weight.

We don’t have to follow evolutionary cues anymore. Women don’t need to stay home and protect the house. They need to gather resources as well. Men don’t need to birth a huge brood because most of them will die. The average couple has a few kids, not 19 (I’m looking at you, Duggars). If we all followed our evolutionary brain, men would kill each other for the woman most likely to produce children (hasn’t anyone seen bros over hoes in action?) and women would only mate with the man who has the biggest bank account.

Basically, don’t panic that because you aren’t fitting into the lizard brain, you’re going to be ignored. We don’t work on purely instinct today. Get a guy’s attention with your brain and sense of humor. Don’t think that science is going to take over and do all the work for you and you’ll be left behind.

If you don’t break the rules sometimes, you’ll go crazy.

It’s a fact. Growing up I was never in trouble, per se, but I took a lot of offense to what I thought were arbitrary rules. I didn’t understand why girls had to think they were fat (my brilliant nine year old answer was that when you looked down at yourself, the perspective made you look rounder), who made up these math formulas, and who decided what books I read in school (if a thirteen year old wants to read Please Kill Me, let her, dammit).

This is why I believe in destroying your caloric limit/healthy lifestyle every once in a while. I don’t mean being paranoid about it and hating yourself tomorrow. I don’t mean planning it. I mean gleefully, spontaneously going overboard.

I have no interest in poor health or becoming overweight, but I also have no interest in counting every calorie, always passing up good foods, and not eating anything I bake.

I’ve said before that I believe in food as culture and family. Today I had a huge greasy breakfast at a diner with my family. Then I made Bourbon Butterscotch Blondies and ate one. Then we had pizza for dinner. After that I ate cereal, a carrot cake bar, and two more blondies. And I didn’t care. I don’t feel guilty. I didn’t plan it, it just happened, and it was fun for gods sake.

I don’t do it every day. I don’t plan to do it once a week. It just happens and when it does, it’s really fucking indulgent and a downright good time.

Give yourself a break. Take a breather. Eat a piece of chocolate cheesecake at 4am in your underwear. You won’t be fatter. You won’t be unhealthy. You won’t have ruined your diet (because it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle). If anything, it’ll shock your system a little which is always good for you. But don’t just do it for that. Do it because you deserve it and Bourbon Butterscotch Blondies are damn good.

(Source: boostyouresteem)

Stop hating your body. Start shopping

It’s spring (almost, it’s not freezing so it counts as spring here) so it’s time for new clothes. Maybe they’ll need to be smaller. Maybe bigger. Maybe the size won’t change. Regardless, you probably need some new shorts, tanks, and even - omg- swimsuits.

This can cause a lot of anxiety for everyone from the very fit, to the skinny, to the overweight. This doesn’t cause anxiety for people truly comfortable with themselves - from the very fit, to the skinny, to the overweight.

Why? Because these people are aware that clothing sizes, especially for women, are bullshit. We don’t go by inches so every brand sizes differently. I have three pairs of jeans all in the same size, one pair is baggy, one almost too tight to wear, and one comfy. Some places vanity size - put a size 8 tag on something that’s actually more like a 12/14 - and some go by S/M/L which is the most impossible thing to figure out ever.

You aren’t made to fit clothes. Clothes are made to fit you. If something doesn’t fit you, don’t get mad at yourself. It’s not your fault. You aren’t too fat/tall/short/skinny. The skirt is too small/short/long/big. Say, ‘damn you, skirt,’ then get a different size.

Can anyone see the size in your pants? No. It’s there so you can find jeans in your size without taking out every single pair. This would be a lot easier if all companies could agree on what sizes 1, 2, 3, 14, 16, 18, 20 all mean. It would be great if we could just go by inches and never have to try a pair on again, but don’t hold your breath for that.

The dressing room is notoriously horrendous with nine thousand mirrors and poor lighting. Keep in mind that this is not how you look during your daily life out in the world.

So screw the sizing, remember that the dressing room makes everyone feel bad, and get whatever kind of bathing suit you damn well want.