Before I delve into that though, let me
just share that my teenage years were no picnic. But, as Bette Midler once said, if I had known as a child that my differences would become assets, my life would have been much easier!
 |
| If I could return, as my own Fair-God-Mother to my 13 year old self, this is the wisdom I would impart... |
Seriously. Just don’t do it! The best thing
you can ever spend your time on is working out what is important to you. And
then live by it. If I had a dollar for every girlfriend of mine who had sex
with someone, smoked, drank or drugged, or did some other thing to fit in with
a group, keep a boyfriend or try to impress someone, I’d be filthy rich! Bottom
line is, you have to go to bed at night with your choices. No one else does.
And while other people get over or forget stuff, it’s much harder to earn your
own self-respect back. This leads me perfectly to tip two….
Tip
Two: The word ‘ex’ is in ‘sex’.
Anyone who pressures you to do things you
aren’t ready for is not showing you any care or respect and is certainly not
worthy of your time, let alone your body! Take time in making choices concerning
your body because once you do something, you can’t undo it. And boys don’t
stick around just because you might put out. In fact, the opposite is true.
While boys might play with the girl who puts out, the one they are going to
take home, take to the school formal or want to be with, is the girl who
demonstrates her own self-respect. It’s important to be informed and above all
else, make sure you are making choices to please yourself, not anyone else and
especially not some guy whose name you won’t remember when you’re a successful,
gorgeous twenty-something.
 |
| You teach others how to treat you by how you treat yourself. |
Trust me, those girls and guys who never
had to work at anything harder than coming up with a new insult or a new way to
put someone down will amount to nothing. Wait til you look at the facebook
pages of the bitches you went to school with when you’re my age! You’ll laugh
yourself stupid for a night, then you’ll start to feel sorry for the way their lives
turned out!
Whatever group you are in, or not in, don’t
worry about it! As adults it really and truly won’t matter and as long as you
abide by rule number one, and always respect yourself, who gives a toss what
anyone at school might say about you. Because while you’re busy developing your
talents, your wit and your exuberance that will make you completely POP as a
young adult, those who may endeavor to make your life hell now will wither away
into oblivion when their gaggle of wankers isn’t around on a daily basis to
stroke their egos.
Tip Four: You always have the right to choose for yourself.
While we are growing up, and indeed
throughout our lives, we are given messages about who we are. We are labeled,
continuously. Smart, dumb, arty, muso, pretty, messy, funny, etc. The lists are
endless. But people can be WRONG! Just because someone else knows you to be a
certain way doesn’t meant they are right. My own mother was convinced I was developmentally
challenged until my final year of high school. She even asked my principal if
he had made a typo when she saw that I had graduated with Distinction. People
get stuff wrong-all the time-and you always have the right to choose for
yourself and reinvent yourself. Let them say what they want. Get rid of the
labels of others and decide for yourself who you are and what you will be. And finally…
Tip
Five: There is no relationship as important as the one you develop with
yourself.
Every moment of every day for the rest of
your life there is one person who will be right there, through every last
second. YOU! How you feel about and relate to yourself is the key ingredient to
either a happy or a miserable life. You are the one person you’ll never ever
escape from. You can get married or move to another country but guess what? You
still go to bed with you every night. Low self-esteem stems from
low-self-respect and low self-respect comes from choosing things that do not
show that you value yourself.
So today, right now, whatever you think about
yourself (too fat, too smart, too pimply, too talented, whatever), start by acknowledging
that from now on you are going to be your best friend. You are going to stand
by your choices and not berate yourself. You are going to stand up for yourself
and do what you know to be right. You are going to love and accept your body
the way it is. If you get this relationship right, I promise you, every moment
of every day is easier. Self-loathing takes energy and sucks the life out of
everything you do. It is so much cooler to turn the loathing energy into loving
energy, and do something awesome for yourself! The world is a hard enough
place, so give yourself a break and just be on your own side!
 |
| I love me. I love me lots. I trust me, I trust me lots. I respect me. I respect me lots. |
Until next we speak, butterfly kisses,
Wyld. x
