life gets better once you start valuing yourself

We’ve all been there before… accepting less than what we deserve. Whether it be in a relationship, a friendship, a job, an apartment.

We think “Well, this is good enough.” But is it really? No.

We end up settling. 

We settle for less than the bare minimum in relationships. We allow people to push our boundaries, giving far too many the “benefit of the doubt.” We accept less money than we deserve in jobs because we’re too scared to state our worth. We stay in apartments, homes, cities, towns, far longer than we want to because we’re too scared to leave, to see what is waiting for us around the corner. 

So at the end of the day, we settle.

Because we think accepting less is better than accepting nothing.
Because we’d rather have half a loving relationship than none at all.
Because we’d rather have a job we dislike than fear being without one.
Because we’d rather stay in a place that makes us unhappy, then risk being uncomfortable and venturing outside of what we know. 

We hope for “enough”, falling just short of it and then settle for “almost enough.”

But “almost enough” isn’t going to get you out of bed in the morning. Almost enough isn’t going to keep you fulfilled. It might keep you content for a while, but that ache for wanting more will always be there, calling your name. 

Life gets better once you start valuing yourself.

Once you start walking away from people who mistreat you, once you stop giving to those who only want to take from you, once you start speaking up for yourself, once you start stating your worth, once you start treating yourself with the love you easily give away to others, once you stop accepting less than what you deserve…life starts getting better.

When you finally start valuing yourself, things fall into place for you little by little. You meet people who make you feel safe, who love the parts of yourself that you struggle with. You make friends that feel like home. You find jobs that see your worth and want to invest in you. Life feels lighter.

You deserve more than enough. Not almost enough. Not close enough. Not “eh, this isn’t really what I want but I’m going to settle anyway.”

You deserve enough.