Learning To Love Myself!!

Heyyy friends!!

It's Friday again, the last Friday in February, in fact! So crazy that we're almost to March, but I am excited that we get a Leap Day this year! It feels like we haven't had a February 29th in, like... FOUR YEARS!! So that's something to get hyped for :)

Now, before we get into this week's topic, I have a couple pieces of VERY exciting news to share with all of you! I've been talking about these for the past few weeks on here, in the newsletter, and on the YouTube channel, and I'm hyped to finally have some things to announce!!

First and foremost, the form to submit Best Feeling Ever Connections is now officially OPEN!!!! You can access it conveniently here: bestfeelingever.com/connections

Simply put, Connections are anything we do to move towards being our very best selves and living our best lives! They can be things we do to take good care of ourselves, help others, help our communities or environment, expand our horizons, or just about anything that helps us to grow! The purpose of submitting Connections is to CELEBRATE all of the great things that each and every one of us is doing, so we want to share them with everyone out here, through the Newsletter, the YouTube Channel, our social media, and of course, right here on this blog! Please submit your Connections, and you will see them right here in future posts! :)

There is a lot more to this concept and I want to get more in-depth soon, so be on the lookout for a bonus blog post, newsletter, and YouTube video that are all about explaining the concept of Connections, which will be coming this week! For now, please check out the form and submit if you would like to! Can't wait to see them!

The next piece of news is that the Best Feeling Ever Discord Server is officially UP AND RUNNING!! For those of you unfamiliar, Discord is a great group messaging app that has a lot of really cool features. We will be building a brand-new platform for the Best Feeling Ever Community to continue growing and expanding through this app! Anyone can join by following this link, and it works on both mobile and desktop: https://discord.gg/RBZmAE Please join!! :)

Alright, now to get into this week's topic! This week, we will be talking all about LOVING OURSELVES! Most of you out there who know me know that my journey to learn to love myself, fully and completely, has been one of the most important parts of my life over the past few years and is also a core part of how Best Feeling Ever was created. But how did it all begin? Well, let's take a look.

To be honest, up until around the time I turned 15, I never really thought too much about whether or not I loved myself. I was always a pretty confident and outgoing kid, and I was very happy with who I was. I did love myself a great deal. But then I reached my sophomore year of high school, and as I talked about in last week's post, this is when I started thinking that it would be cool if I branched out a bit more and formed deeper connections with a lot of my peers at school. This wasn't as easy as I had hoped, and I couldn't help but feel that I was being left out and excluded. Though I knew that my peers weren't intentionally trying to alienate me, I still couldn't help but worry that there was something about me that was wrong or inferior despite my best efforts to connect.

Fortunately, as I progressed through high school, despite the pain and loneliness I found some amazing friends who helped remind me that I am loved, that I am cared about, that I am accepted just the way I am. They helped me to realize that there are people around us who truly care and want to help us out of the dark loneliness that too many of us feel all too often. That's when it really started to hit me: Isn't it silly that we have to feel so lonely when we are surrounded by so many great people? Often, all it really takes is the opportunity to connect with those around us, and we can have new lifelong friends before we know it!

That's why in my senior year of high school, I set out to do something about this epidemic of loneliness, since I knew that I was far from the only one at my school who was experiencing these feelings of alienation. I started a club at my school called "Be The Change Club", named after Gandhi's famous quote, "Be The Change You Wish To See In The World." The goal of it was to help people from all over the school to come together in a safe, positive environment, so that we could all connect and make brand-new friends who we know would be there for us!

And I am happy to say that this was quite the success, and of course when I graduated and began college that fall, I immediately got to work starting the club up there. I have now been running it at my college for almost four years, and it has grown into quite the thriving organization! But the thing is, throughout my time running this club in my high school and starting it at my college... something was still missing. Big time.

I couldn't really understand why, but even though I was quite successful in starting up this club that helped lots of people connect with each other, I still didn't really feel connected myself. The feelings of loneliness and isolation still crept in, and even became worse. As I progressed through my first two years of college, I noticed myself feeling more anxious at certain times and depressed at other times. I just couldn't seem to shake the feeling that something was wrong. Something deep inside.

It took me until almost the end of my sophomore year of college to figure out what was really going on. I realized that in order to feel better, I needed to learn to love myself again. Now, it's not like this was the first time that I had thought about this since I started feeling lonely in high school. I had come to this realization, or so I thought, in my senior year when I had first started up the club. I remember coming across the quote "Love yourself, and everything else will fall into place", and thinking that that was what I was missing in life. It's a very true quote, but there was one problem back then: I didn't realize what it truly meant to love myself!

When I had first thought of it, I had thought of loving myself in terms of doing the kinds of things that made me the happiest, and back when I was first starting up the club in high school, it made me so happy to see it coming together. After all, I was helping people to finally overcome the painful feelings of loneliness that I had known for far too long, and it filled my heart to see them become happier. But I was making it ALL ABOUT helping others, without giving too much thought to helping myself. To listening to myself, to what my inner voice was desperately trying to tell me.

The more I got into running this club, the more I felt like I was beginning to take on other peoples' problems as my own - and not just those in the club, but other friends of mine, and eventually even random people I was finding myself talking to online and on social media! This eventually opened me up to some toxic relationships, and I found myself putting others' needs before mine and letting myself be taken advantage of in some pretty harsh ways. Sadly, I had lost having enough of a sense of myself to be able to stand up for myself and get people to treat me the way I knew I deserved to be treated.

But as I approached the end of my sophomore year of college and the feelings of anxiety and depression just seemed to get worse, I knew I needed to do something before I sacrificed any more of myself. I knew that I needed to go deep inside myself and heal the hurting inner child that was desperately trying to make his voice heard. That was crying out for love, compassion, and attention. I knew I needed to make things right, and make myself whole again.

Fortunately, it was also around this time that I was getting better at meditation, and looking deep within myself to see what was going on under the surface. I knew then, however, that I needed to look deeper than ever before. So I did. I challenged myself to confront everything that I had been through, everything that I had done to myself to get me to this point. I found the broken part of myself who just needed to be loved, and I apologized for neglecting his needs for so long. And we talked it out. And eventually, I forgave myself. But I was still worried about something, and suddenly I had a terrifying thought. What if it wasn't enough? What if it hadn't worked? What if it was too late, and I could never truly heal myself?

But then, a split second later... something clicked. I suddenly realized that if I could learn to love myself the way I had, at this point at which I felt the most broken and defeated, then I could love myself to the fullest at any point in my life. It's hard to explain, but a sudden wave of not just relief, but euphoria washed over me. And then I knew that I had done it. I had succeeded in healing myself, or at least proving to myself that I could, and nothing could ever take that away from me.

This was an intense spiritual and emotional experience for me, and it is very hard to put it into words, especially in a relatively short blog post like this. But I hope that this gives you some idea of the experience. After this, I felt things starting to get better at last. I finally started to feel like my old self again, and although I knew I had a long path ahead of me, I was filled with hope and confidence again. I knew it would get better from here.

And I'm so happy to say that it has! I have come a long way over these past two years since then, and I keep making more and more progress every day. I am loving myself more, taking better care of myself, speaking more kindly to myself. I know what I deserve and how I deserve to be treated, and I will no longer settle for anything less. I know that I am worthy of the greatest love that this universe has to offer, and I am here to claim that, always and forever. For myself and for everyone. I truly believe more than ever that love starts within one's soul and is radiated outward, so to fulfill my mission of sending as much love as possible out to the universe, I am making sure to give that same kind of love to myself.

And although the journey is long, it is full of such beautiful hope. And I can honestly say that I have never been happier. :)

Alright, so what do you do to love and take good care of yourself? What is your relationship with yourself like? Is there anything you want to do, or are trying to do, to get better at showing yourself love? What do you do to take care of and fulfill your needs? Please share your stories with me if you would like, I want to hear them!

Alright my loves, have a beautiful weekend! Be on the lookout for the newsletter coming later tonight, and the new YouTube video coming on Sunday! And of course, please be sure to join the Discord server if you would like, and submit some Connections!! The links to do both are at the top of this page. Can't wait to see all of you soon!! Keep being the amazing and beautiful human beings you are, and always be kind to yourselves and to others!! Sending infinite love and hugs to all of you!!!! :) <3

Your friend forever,

Adam Silverstein :) <3