Self-appreciation

Although self-appreciation is just what it sounds like, appreciation of one's self, it is amazing how it can be affected by your interactions with other people. I think a lot of people don't realize how much our interactions with others reflect and affect our opinion and value for ourselves. I'm realizing this more and more as my relationships change and how that affects the way I feel about myself. I know for me it is difficult when relationships change as it seems to disturb my sense of self. The way I related to someone before is different now and that brings in to question things I thought to be true that maybe were wrong or wrongly perceived.

I am realizing that I need to put more value into myself. I am an amazing person. Smart, caring, beautiful, sexy, insightful, and loving. I deserve relationships with people who see that in me and respect it. People who are willing to respect me in the way I want and need to be. People who appreciate my value.

I think women especially tend to undervalue themselves and sell themselves short. By accepting less than we deserve, we make it acceptable to treat us this way. It isn't acceptable. Every human being deserves love, compassion and respect. We deserve to be treated as intelligent, independent, strong beings, not as objects to be used and discarded.

I feel like society promotes the treatment of women like objects more and more in such subtle ways that we don't notice it creep in. I know that I catch myself judging myself by my beauty, femininity, and love of a man. I don't know when that happened, but I'm sad to see it and see it as a huge issue to combat. I'm valuable as a person, on my own, whether or not I'm in high heels and on the arm of a man.

On the other hand, I know that I too have treated people without the respect that I should. I've taken advantage and used people to my advantage without considering their feelings or emotions. But the older I get, the more I see that the way we interact with one another is what truly shapes the world. It's our daily relationships with people that dictate the larger energy and world we live in. So I feel like it's worth stepping back and taking care with relationships, even insignificant ones or ones that we don't see as being significant.