Positive Thinking: Loving Yourself

I've been running the Positive Beauty Pledge for quite some time now, and I have to confess to sometimes feeling like such a hypocrite. Not because I don't believe in the Pledge's message, because I honestly do believe that everyone is beautiful. However, it's easy to see the positive in other people, but personally, I find it incredibly difficult to see those things in me.

If you asked me to write a list of things that I don't like about myself, I could be here for a very long time. Things range from my physical appearance to personality flaws, and there really are a lot of things that I would love to change about myself. But, sometimes I have to re-read my own Positive Beauty Pledge and remind myself that being negative about myself doesn't make me a bad person, it makes me human.

Personally, I think that as long as you don't allow your negativity to completely consume your life, then we're all completely normal.

So, to spread some positive love, I decided to set you all a challenge:

All you have to do is tell me, and the rest of the world ten things that you really love about yourself. Don't focus on one area, think about various ones:

• Physical appearance
• Personality
• Talents
• Who you are

To give you an idea, I've written up a list of my own, and trust me when I tell you that this list was very hard to write. I got stuck several times, and as you can see as of writing, I only have eight things, which feels like a small failure, but it was a really good pick-me-up and I still wanted to share it:

1. I love my chubby cheeks
2. I love the way that little things excite me
3. I love my quirks - the inability to talk to people on the phone, the fact I can't tell my lefts from my rights, because they all make me who I am, and I have no idea who I'd be without them.
4. I love how passionate I feel towards the things that I believe in:
• My Beauty Blog
• The Positive Beauty Pledge
• My Writing
5. I love how I've learnt to cherish my glasses, because they're a part of me and I can not imagine not wearing them
6. I love my new long nails (who knew that would ever happen??)
7. I love my timid nature, because I feel that it helps me to appreciate the world in a quiet way, as an observer, because without being able to observe the world, I couldn't be the writer that I am today.
8. I love how dedicated I am to my lifelong passion for writing, and the fact that it's the one thing that has been with me since childhood, that I have really embraced and would be so lost without

The most important thing about doing this list, is to remember that you are writing the list for YOU, not anyone else. If anyone disagrees with your list, then that is their problem and you should be proud in the knowledge that they probably wouldn't be able to list ten things, not honestly anyway.

Positivity is NOT about being big-headed or vain. It is about accepting yourself, in your own skin, and saying "Hey, I'm not all bad!". And no, you don't have to believe everything in your list 100% of the time.

So come on, what ten things do you love about yourself? Share them on your blog, but don't forget to let me know, so I can check them out :)