Embracing Self-Love: A Journey from Self-Doubt to Confidence

“I have been battling with myself for years before I finally accepted who I am. Looking back after 20 years, I’m proud of what I have achieved so far.

I felt like a failure throughout my high school years. I’ve convinced myself for years that I’m not good enough and I must be like others; successful in life. But thankfully, my close friend encouraged me to be positive. He made me realize that I should embrace self-love to the fullest.

Initially, it was tough to accept that. I even thought he could be saying all those nice things because yeah, I’m his friend. After we finished school, all of us went separate ways, including my close friend. So, I carried myself alone in college and yeah, I didn’t have anyone to turn to.

It wasn’t really an option for me to be positive on my own. I even nearly gave up while in college, but I thought a lot about the advice that he gave during high school, “The only way for you to keep going is to be positive”. And eventually, I learned to be independent.

I also used to have an unhealthy coping mechanism which was stress eating. So, whenever I return home from school, I would get stressed out and mindlessly reached for food. I didn’t know why, but I felt lonely. My siblings all lived in their school’s dormitories, so it was just myself, my mother and my grandmother. I got sad because I literally have no one to talk to and I couldn’t study. And I would purposefully ground myself in my room.

Another thing is I kept comparing myself to the point where I felt insecure. But the way I see it now is if I start comparing myself to others, that’s when I want to improve myself.

I mostly look up to Vivy Yusof for this. It’s admirable to see how a successful entrepreneur like her was able to cope with criticism and problems. Whenever she receives negative comments about her, she never reacted to it. So, that’s how I learned from her to keep going in life. And I hope I can brush off all the negative things people say about me someday, just like her.

I believe if people talk about you and hate seeing your successes, that shows the level of our own success. Your reputation in the eyes of others. I told myself maybe I will not receive that much of hate like her, but whatever challenges life is about to throw at me, I’ll just think positive and say, ‘The problem is not in our control, but we can control our thoughts’.

But now I feel that I have achieved self-love by 90%. I think knowing I achieved that is my happiest feeling I felt so far. I admit I do compare myself to others but not to the point where I hate myself. Yeah, I forgive myself constantly because it’s okay to be different.

Some might make a sad story of being alone, but I love being alone now. I’m able to go out and enjoy myself because I no longer rely on others. So when you start loving yourself, you see others will come to love you as well. You attract what you are. Please forgive yourself. At the end of the day, you only have yourself as your supporter. If you don’t love yourself, who’s going to love you or save you?”