remember that what you’re telling yourself creates your emotions. if you tell yourself you’re worthless, you’re going to feel like shit. if you tell yourself you have great people in your life who love and care for you, you’re going to feel pretty damn connected. it’s just that simple. you have an inner voice, and however strong or weak that voice may be, it has some influence on your emotions. it can make you insecure. “that girl is looking at me. she’s judging what i’m wearing, and she thinks my nose is too big because it fucking is, and why did i even come outside today?” and you might ignore the voice, or it might control your emotions for the rest of the day. the point is, what you tell yourself is the basis for how you feel. your interpretation of an event is always stronger than the factual event itself.
in a conflict, examine the evidence. it’s not all or nothing: things rarely are. one f on a history test might affect your gpa, but in the long run it’s not going to cost you that summer internship or make you screw up your first job interview. failing one time does not make you a failure. that’s what so many people have trouble understanding. if you flunk out one semester of college, that doesn’t mean you can’t go to some community college, bring your grades back up, and go back the next semester. you can fail and still be a success. i won’t bring up thomas edison and his light bulb because that example is so worn out it should be stuffed in a vault marked “do not open”, but you get the idea. (or if you don’t, you probably aren’t old enough to be reading this).
share your shortcomings with the people you trust. this may seem like a sure way to feel even more like a failure, but it isn’t. most of the time they’re dealing with issues similar to your own, or if not, issues that they were too afraid to bring up before you put your own out on the line. telling each other your shortcomings actually brings relationships closer, whether they are with your best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, parent, etc. they expose imperfections in both of you. nobody’s perfect, but sometimes we need to be told that to believe it.
this isn’t long an all-inclusive list; rather, just musings i’ve had recently throughout this especially stressful part of my college semester. if you get nothing else out of this, just remember that if you’re feeling insane or overwhelmed or like the whole world is against you and you’re totally alone, you aren’t. there are a fuck ton of us out here who feel the exact same as you do.
xo
Can I Borrow That Shirt? 