What my friend taught me

I have a friend. A great friend. A friend I couldn’t do without. One of those friends who you want to tell when something goes well, or to whom you rant when everything is going to shit.

My friend is beautiful. My friend has an AMAZING body. My friend is stylish, intelligent, funny and crazy (which is brilliant). I love spending time with her, and I am lucky to have her.

The only thing is, my friend doesn’t know this. She spends all her time seeing the best in me, but can never see the best in herself. Some of it is her own humour and how she bonds with people – self-deprecation. We all do it, and it’s definitely a cultural thing.

But my friend goes further than this. She is so down on herself, it makes me sad. She just doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see the light that I see and I wish I could help her do that. It makes me sad because that’s how I can be, and how many women (and men) can also be.

We criticise, we self-berate, we see the worst and remember only when we’ve fucked up. Sure not everyone does this, but many of us do. We focus on the negative, on the bad things people will say about us and not on the best.

What if we chose to focus on the good? On how well we’ve done today, who we’ve helped, and which dragons we have conquered. What if we asked what would need to happen to make us feel happy, peaceful or satisfied in life rather than ‘I'm not good enough’? What if we focused on feeling good today, on meeting our needs and finding our pleasure, because well, we all deserve that?

You’ve seen ‘This Girl Can’. We’re moving to a place of self-acceptance, and it feels good. It doesn’t mean we can’t reach goals and achieve, it just means maybe it’s not necessary to hate ourselves so much anymore while we find our way. 

So to my lovely, crazy friend I want to say again, you're great.