How to Enjoy Your Life Even When It Is Hard

Life can be hard. So hard that sometimes it’s difficult to see why
you need to love yourself and feel comfortable with who you are.
Weight
loss coaches and diet programs tell you, ‘you are too fat’, your eating
habit is responsible for shortening your lifespan’, while beauty
companies say, ‘you can improve your looks to look a million bucks,’
even when you have no source of income. Even society says, ‘you can’t
get a job without a degree’, you are not a success without fame,’ or
‘you are not entirely accomplished when you are still single at 40.’
Thereby putting pressure on you to become a different version of
yourself.

What many people fail to realize is that life is a
process. With each stage comes new challenges to overcome. It’s not
wrong to have an ideal body weight, to work towards or have an elevated
look for specific reasons, but you must know who you are and what your
values are in life in other to become your definition of success.

 Steps to Loving Yourself While Striving For Self Actualization:

    1. Avoid comparison:

Nothing
wears at your confidence like self-doubt or fears, borne out of
comparing yourself to people who you believe are in your class. We all
run different races in life, so stay on your lane ‘biko’. Don’t
let social media define you or make you feel the need to be at a
certain level, before you are considered a success. No need to do ‘pepper dem gang’.
What you should be comparing instead, are your personal goals at each
stage of your life. Your motive for achieving them should be deeply
yours, not because you feel you are in competition with anyone.

    2. Do what makes you happy:

Give
yourself a treat. If working out gives you a burst of energy you need,
or allows you wear that dress you love, then, by all means, do it. If
you are a plus size, don’t try to squeeze into a size ten outfit. Wear
your actual size while working on becoming a size 10. Eat healthily and
celebrate your 1 or 2 kg loss. If you fall off the wagon, get back up.
If you love watching films/TV series, have a structured lifestyle that
will allow you do so without becoming lazy. Bottom line, create time for
those things that make you happy.

    3. Create a support system:

There
are people in your life that understand you and what you want for
yourself. They’ll push you till you activate your latent potential and
turn it into the real deal. You need to keep those people close and
spend time with them. The more they challenge you, the sooner you can
get off your bum and get to work on your dreams, or, take on those
things that weigh you down. They know when to praise you, when to tell
you the hard truths and when to assist you. Surround yourself with
people who believe in you and what you are capable of, and soon you’ll
see yourself pushing to be all you can be.

    4. Positive affirmations work:

You
can only go as far as you believe you can. So speak to yourself words
of life and encouragement and have faith in the words you speak. Don’t
have a defeatist mindset; that negates your brain’s ability to find
solutions to the problems around you. Find your sense of self-worth and
completion from within, rather than be tied to external factors you
can’t control. As a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So think on
things that are of good report, praiseworthy, mentally uplifting, and
soon your thoughts will become your actions, and you’ll form the right
habits to get you to your goals.
You cannot give what you don’t
have, and ‘boy, this world needs a lot of love!’ There is only ‘one you’
with your DNA sequencing in the whole world, and you only have one life
to live. Make the most of it by loving yourself.