What I tell myself, when I need to —

— because now I actually believe myself when I say it:

You don’t need to do things the way anyone else does.

I tell myself this when I see someone else my age getting written up in the news or on blogs, or successfully doing anything I’d love to be successfully doing: I tell myself this when someone else’s success has made me feel inferior. I don’t have to do it their way. Their path is not my path. My path is mine and mine alone, and no one else can tell me how to walk it.

You don’t need to be like anyone else.

This is something else I tell myself when I’m envious of someone else’s success. I use it, too, when I see some 5’10” skinny girl who’s dressed like a model, and start feeling like her beauty is superior to mine. I am myself, and that is more than enough.

Size 12 is f***ing gorgeous.

I have not stopped feeling beautiful since I came across this website. I look at these women and they remind me that we only idolize thin women because society has said to. We only look down on generous curves and tummy folds because we’ve been told to do so all our lives. I ignore society and choose my own ideals to apply to myself and others. We are all beautiful.

Just because you can’t see my beauty doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I found this on Margaret Cho’s blog and loved the reminder. I use this whenever the previous two statements begin to falter, or in conjunction with one of them to strengthen the message. Society’s ideals are not my ideals, and I am beautiful because and when I say so.

You are brilliant, gorgeous, and wonderful. You’re the most amazing you the world has ever seen and will ever see.

When I remind myself of this, I walk taller, smile at more people, and love my life more. Who can tell me I’m not good enough when I know I am the most perfect me that has ever existed?

You’re doing what you want to do, and from that there can be no regrets.

When I feel like I’m not creating enough or what I make isn’t good enough, this reminds me that the process counts for something. If I die tomorrow, I’ll go knowing I spent my last days doing what I chose to do. There is power in that knowledge.

Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions.

These are two of Don Miguel Ruiz‘s Four Agreements, and they are amazingly helpful in almost any situation — especially when combined with one of the above statements. I’m still pretty neurotic, so sometimes I have to just block thoughts from my mind in order to not take someone’s behavior personally or make assumptions about a situation. But that’s useful too: it clears up space in my head for more important thoughts!

Of course, I’ve heard and read these statements countless times before, but I’ve only begun to internalize them recently, after they’ve stood many tests of insecurity and fear and worry. They only work now because I truly believe them. They free me up to stop worrying about stupid things and to start working on raising my perfect, complete self to ever higher pinnacles of perfection.

And it’s not arrogance or complacency when I say that I am perfect and complete. I am not perfect by some imaginary objective standard of perfection; I am the most perfect me the world has ever known because I am the only me the world has ever known. I start off perfect and complete, but I work to make myself better and better because I myself am the only standard by which I can be judged. I cannot be imperfect; I cannot fail or be lacking; I can only aspire to greater and greater levels of perfection and more and more beautiful completion.