 So, appreciating the present moment is something that I have started and attempting to do because it's so easy to get caught up in different scenarios in your head when that has nothing to do with what you're actually present doing. If you're hanging out with your friends, for example, and in the back of your mind, all you can think about is tomorrow you have to go to work and wake up early and you're really not living in the present moment because you're worrying about other things in the back of your head. No matter what, you're gonna have to go. No matter about if you worry about work the next day or not, you're gonna have to go to work. Therefore, why not choose to not worry about work the next day and just enjoy the time that you have now with your friends instead of ruining your time with your friends just because you have work the next day. Or that's just an example, but whatever, maybe you could input your own situations into this. When you overthink something, it just creates a snowball effect into overthinking pretty much everything and that is eventually just going to lead to mental fog and you're not gonna be able to ever be clear with yourself and you're never gonna be able to be present in the moment and enjoy it thoroughly for what it is. I know that overthinking can be the death to a lot of us. I know pretty much everyone loves to overthink and it's just kind of like in our second nature. That's just what we do because of how we've been brought up. We've always been taught to worry. Or it's really hard to not overthink and to not think about 10 different things at once. Being in the present moment has just helped me so much get to get out of my head and to really just reflect on other situations inwards and just be present in every single moment which has led to mental clarity and which has led to me actually having the best times and enjoying life and loving myself because I'm not always in my head about everything. So the way that I like to be mindful and to help myself stay in the present moment is by practicing meditation. So basically what meditation is is it's just you clearing your mind of any thoughts literally just pretty much like erasing your mind at the moment and just thinking of absolutely nothing and just being. I like meditation because it helps me train my mind for those moments that I want to be in the present moment and the best way to get to know yourself and the best way to love yourself is to be in the present moment with yourself all of the time and not to be so scrambled in your head because when you're scrambled in your head that creates anxiety, worries, stress. Meditation kind of can help you retrain your mind, help that muscle in your brain that whenever you want to be present it just kind of flicks on and you can just ignore all of your worries and your stresses. So to meditate literally it doesn't have to be some huge ass deal. You can just lay in your bed, sit down on a mat, lay down on a mat, whatever you want to be, whatever you feel most comfortable with and literally just put a 10 minute timer on. If you want you can put like a soundscape in the background or white noise. Just sit down and just close your eyes and just breathe and focus on your breath and don't think of anything. Just clear your mind and it will be hard at first but eventually you're going to retrain your mind and help train that muscle in your brain to just be in the present moment and this will help so much with your self love because you're not going to be constantly going back and forth in your head and worrying every single day. Sitting in the state of meditation is going to help you to get to know yourself because you're completely going to be blocking out those annoying thoughts that always come up and just literally sitting in your body with yourself and spending time with yourself without thinking about anything else and it's so so precious and if you don't take the time out of your day to do this then those thoughts are just going to keep accumulating and you're never going to give your mind a break and you're never really going to ever sit with yourself just you and really get to know yourself and feel into yourself. Treat yourself like your best friend because if you think about it you spend literally every second of your whole entire life with yourself. You're stuck in your body forever so if you were stuck with somebody forever and you could never leave their side would you not want to have a good relationship with them? Would you not want to love them? You're your own best friend. Treat yourself like you are your own best friend. Put yourself in the shoes of one of your best friends. If one of your best friends was having a bad day, if one of your best friends was feeling sad what would you do for them? Would you check in on them if they're okay? Would you go over and talk to them? Would you go and watch a movie with them to make them feel better? Would you go buy them their favorite things? What would you do to your best friend? And that is what you've got to do to yourself. That is how you have to treat yourself because at the end of the day we are so hard on ourselves because it's just ourselves like oh it's just me so I can be this hard on myself. But would you be that hard on your best friend? Probably not. You have to put that into perspective and look at it that way where you're literally stuck with yourself for the rest of your life. Treat yourself like you are. Treat yourself with love every day. Treat yourself like you would want your best friend to treat you and act towards you. Your best friend always saying negative comments to you that's not okay. You would not allow your best friend to say negative comments to you or be toxic towards you. Therefore don't allow yourself to be toxic towards yourself. Just figure out what makes you feel good. What you need from yourself whether it's a day of just self care once a week. Whatever it is make sure that you're giving that to yourself because you have to maintain that relationship with yourself. When you have a best friend or when you have even a friend you don't go and not talk to them for a year. You know you want to check in on them and you want to hang out with them and have a good time with them. So literally do the same for yourself. Treat yourself like you want to be treated by others. Yourself is the most important person there is. Follow through with what you want to do. If you make a promise to yourself to go to the gym don't start making excuses in your head because when you let yourself down that's like like I said before like letting your friend down. You wouldn't let your friend down. So why are you going to let yourself down? If you cancel on your friend, if you have an appointment at the gym with your friend and you were her ride you wouldn't cancel on her. So if you're going to the gym with yourself why would you cancel on yourself? If you have a commitment to yourself to let's say start to eating healthy, getting back to a good workout schedule, follow through with that. You owe it to yourself, you're free to yourself, we'll thank you for it. When you look back at yourself in five years you're going to be so thankful you did what you did. In order to love yourself you have to know that making mistakes is part of life and it is okay to fail sometimes it is okay to make some mistake because if you don't make mistakes then you don't learn. A lot of the times we can beat ourselves up for the sole purpose that we didn't succeed or it didn't go how we would like it to or we made a mistake and the most important thing to take away from mistakes is to learn something about it because to me personally if I make a mistake or if anybody makes a mistake if you learn something from it to me it's not a mistake it's a learning opportunity because if you don't make mistakes how else are you supposed to learn how else are you supposed to know better and I think that making mistakes is honestly one of the most important things in life because that's how you grow, that's how you move on, that's how you learn new things and learn how to get past obstacles and it's so important not to beat yourself up about making a mistake or failing because everything happens for a reason and if you have to keep pushing then you have to keep pushing if you have to try to find another way then try to find another way but beating yourself up about something that you made a mistake about or that you failed at is not going to do you any good. It's why you make out of your experiences you guys at the end of the day if you look at a mistake and you think of it as something negative then it's going to be something negative and it's going to be something that you're going to hate yourself for but if you look at the outside perspective of looking at a mistake as a learning opportunity I promise you it'll help you look inwards rather than beat yourself up about it and get mad at yourself and hurt yourself over it. I just think it is it is one of the most beautiful perspectives that you can have on life. Another word for mistakes is sinning and I feel like a lot of the times what people deem as sins can be just perceived as well as learning opportunities, learning from your mistakes and I really encourage you guys next time that you guys make a mistake or you fail or something along those lines just to look inwards and see how you can learn from that opportunity because it's like the quote you can't have sunshine without rain which is like the exact same thing you need to fail or you need to make a mistake in order to grow and learn otherwise you'll never know if you didn't go through it and on that same note it is totally totally normal to go through tough times in life it is totally normal to sometimes wake up and just not be in a good mood happens to the best of us it happens to every single one we're all human if you're feeling shitty don't go beat yourself up about it because you're feeling shitty for a reason so maybe it's just a simple fact that you need to start having a more positive outlook on things or maybe you really just gotta reflect inwards and change something in your life if you guys are feeling shitty or sad or if you're falling into depression or whatever it may be know first of all that it's going to get better for you and you just have to have yourself at the end of the day and know that things will get better for you but it's also up to you to take those steps in the right direction and to grow from it and to turn inwards it's so important to look inwards for validation rather than caring about what other people think and this is so tied into self love if you care about what other people think then you're literally facing your happiness on other people and what they think it's not about you and what you do it's on what other people think so you're putting your happiness and your love for yourself in other people's hands you want to snatch that right back right now if you're happy with what you're doing and if you love what you're doing then that is all that matters you don't need validation from anybody if it is making you happy it is your path and you love doing it that is all that matters do not seek external validation I think that your internal validation is all that you need at the end of the day because you're the only one that's gonna be with yourself forever you're the only one that's gonna be there for yourself forever caring about what what other people think and looking outwards for validation is only going to literally disconnect you from yourself because that just goes to show that doesn't matter what you think or you like it matters people other people are thinking about you and what other people want you to do if you want to find true self-love you have to know that you're enough at the end of the day if you want to do something all you need is your own validation you do not need anybody else's and you should trust yourself and love yourself to know that you're enough and you do not need anybody else also just remember that we are 100% all completely unique in our own ways 100% completely unique in our own ways every single one of us is different do not compare yourself to other people on social media to other people you see in your life do not compare yourself first of all social media is fake people photoshop their pictures all the time it's not real it is not real if you're comparing yourself to social media you may as well compare yourself to a plastic Barbie doll because it's literally almost the same thing if you want to seek true love and true self validation you have to stop comparing yourself to other people and you just got to know that you're enough you're unique in your own way everybody is different everyone is different and that's what's special about you and you have to realize that in order to love yourself is that every single thing on you every single thing in you is unique nobody is identical therefore we are all unique for a reason at the end of the day you're the only you that exists and I know it sounds like really cheesy but it's so true it is so true there's no such thing as being ugly or pretty in reality there's no such thing it's what society deems as being ugly or pretty there's no such actual thing it's just something though but a concept that we've created everybody is just different and that's it at the end of the day everybody is just different and that's it so just know that honestly what helps is just like sitting and being like wow this body is housing me right now like this body is housing me like wow and appreciate that appreciate your body that your heart beats for you every single day your lungs breathe for you every single day your brain works for you every single day and appreciate that about your body and how amazing that is because it is truly amazing and you're the only person in your body like this is your body like it's yours like it's not crazy that's just so crazy but yeah just know that you're stuck in your body forever so appreciate it your body has been through so much mentally and so much physically you have to reward it for what it's been through and realize that and appreciate that because once you start appreciating your body your body will start appreciating you it's got to come from the inside out also another big thing is protecting yourself you guys you have to protect yourself what I mean by that is let's say you have a younger sibling or even a friend you obviously want to protect them from bad things do that for yourself cut toxic people out of your life don't let negative people in your life protect yourself protect your heart protect your soul because you do not deserve any negativity that is unnecessary in your life in order to love yourself you have to feel protected because that is just such an important aspect to self-love is protecting yourself and not just opening yourself up to everybody because you have to know how special you are and how valuable your time is and your life is and you shouldn't just allow any buddy to just randomly walk in that especially negative people or negative things just be very cautious and maybe even reflect on if there is people that's are toxic or negative in your life right now that you need to cut out and reflect on that and realize that it's totally okay to cut people or things out of your life that are toxic or negative because at the end of the day there's no point of surrounding yourself with any negativity when you can choose positivity just think about it and ask yourself like am I protecting myself who am I allowing into my life and what am I allowing into my life are the things in my life making me happy are the things in my life that are negative and making me sad love yourself enough to let toxic people go out of your life what do you say when you look in the mirror what do you tell yourself when you look in the mirror how do you feel when you look in the mirror how do you feel when you're doing your makeup do you need makeup to love yourself or do you feel beautiful do you need to do a specific hairstyle to love yourself or to feel beautiful reflect on that and think about the things that you're telling yourself every single day when you're getting ready for work getting ready to go out getting ready for school whatever you're getting ready for in the morning whenever you get ready be conscious of what you're saying to yourself in the mirror and as you're getting ready because you may even be feeding your mind and your body with negative thoughts without even knowing it. So next time you guys look into the mirror and you're getting ready be conscious of what you say to yourself and how you're treating yourself in that time. We can be so negative to ourselves and just say all of these things and just not even realize it's happening even though it's getting registered in our body and our brain. So make sure that you're very aware of that and if you catch yourself saying something negative at one point change it to something positive and flip the switch on that. Realize how important it is to feed your body positive thoughts about yourself and get in the habit of doing that every single day even if it's as cheesy as looking in the mirror and telling yourself like I'm beautiful I just live the world nothing can make me beautiful because I'm already beautiful and you just you guys have to really see your true inner beauty and beauty comes from within and it shines out. All starts with what's inside and how you're projecting the hours to yourself. When you're looking at girls on the internet or celebrities and you're admiring their beauty do that to yourself look in the mirror every single day and tell yourself in your head or out loud things that you love about yourself and admire yourself like you're looking at yourself the first time and like as if you were admiring your favorite celebrity or who you think is beautiful. Because we always admire everyone else's beauty but sometimes we forget to admire our own. Live your life for yourself and for nobody else. It's your life. You decide what happens in it to learn how to not care about other people's opinions, don't care about what other people think about you. That's when the true self-love is gonna start to spark and come out and you're going to really start loving yourself. That is the key to being happy, being confident from within loving yourself and who you've become, who you are. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. It was a little different so let me know how you liked it. I love you guys so much. Thank you for tuning in and I literally appreciate you guys more than anything. I'm always sending you guys positive vibes and my gratitude. I love you guys so much. See you guys in my next video. Peace out. Love yourself baby.