A love letter to myself

                                                                                      My dear and wonderful Niki,

      This letter is long overdue, but you know what they say “Better late than never” so, here we go. Actually, I’m gonna use a different saying because it popped up recently in my head, and that is: “Better late than sorry”. And you know why I’m using it? It’s because research has shown that people regret more the things they didn’t do, so, it seems better suited this way. 

      Well, where should I start? It’s not something I ever did and it feels new somehow, even though I wrote before this kind of letters, love ones I mean, but never to myself. Ok, less overthinking more writing 🤪. 

      A funny thing: I just asked Google home to play my music and the song that started with is “The champion” by Carrie Underwood. It’s kind of fitting, right? I mean, thinking how I should do this and a really great and motivational song starts blasting in my room. Yep, the Universe is something more than NSA, it listens on an even bigger scale. 🤣 Ok, no more tip toeing around the subject, let’s get down to it. 

      My darling Niki, I’m so freaking proud of you!!! Yes, this is the first thing you need to hear from me since it’s the foundation of my letter to you. And that is because, it’s essential to remember who you are, how far you’ve come and to know what inspired me to write to you. OK, so you might ask why am I so freaking proud of you? Well, where should I start? 

      First of all, it’s because you are still here, despite your hard to live with, lying and even sometimes dangerous to you, roommate. You know who I am talking about, right? Yep, you got it, it’s your own mind. And yes, I know: she’s also an amazing roommate a lot of the time, one that gives you great ideas from which you get to create beautiful, inspiring things; and yes, she helped you go through hard moments; and yes, she gave you a helping hand and was instrumental in you ending up here; and yes, now she’s your best friend, except from the times when she goes wandering around on bad places like a stray dog 😂 and becomes your worst enemy (ok, fine, you believe you don’t have any enemies, well, if that makes you sleep better at night, let’s keep on with this charade 🤣). But, it’s true, your mind is the living, breathing example of the dichotomy since she helps you get back up after a hard fall, one in which she had a pivotal role in. So yeah, I’m so proud of you for not listening to her when she was at the dangerous end of the spectrum and was whispering in your ear things like, “You’re not cut out for this world so why still be in it?”/ “Life is too hard for you to handle so it might be better to end with it”/ “You’re not strong enough to make it through”/etc, for getting out that dark and cold hole named depression, for still living today when your mind was feeding you thoughts about how to end your pain in an extreme way and for making her your best friend (ahm, most of the time anyway), because those aren’t easy things to do.

       Secondly, it’s because you’ve grown so much that I almost don’t recognize you 😂, I’m kidding, I will always recognize you because I am with you and I watch you, every second of the day. Ok, that sounds a bit creepy and it gives you stalkerish vibes 😂, but I promise it’s not the case. The thing is, you’ve transformed yourself from a very shy, people pleasing, even doormat-like kind of person, into a strong, confident and dare I even say, bold woman. Yes, bold feels just right seeing your latest shenanigans. Which shenanigans you might ask? Well, the most recent one that I’m talking about is creating the self-love challenge. I congratulate you for getting out of your comfort zone and doing this series because I know it helped you become more confident and bold. So yeah, I’m proud of you since I am sure that if I or anyone else had told you to do such a thing a few years ago, you’d have looked at us like we don’t know you and like we’ve been eating from the floor 😂. I feel happy and inspired when I see you putting yourself out there, pushing yourself to do scary things even if your mind tells you to not do them, turning your ideas into real projects even though they don’t bring you big results and doing everything alone since you don’t have someone to encourage you or support you every step of the way. But actually, hold on, this is another reason for why I’m so darn proud of you.

       It’s because you’ve become your own cheerleader, your biggest supporter and your number one fan. Yep, that’s a big realization for you since you’ve been looking for external validation for almost your whole life and that made you suffer a lot when you didn’t receive it. So it’s pretty amazing that you keep on creating stuff even though you very rarely get positive feedback from others, your loved ones don’t seem interested in what you’re doing or ask about it, you don’t really have the chance to talk about your creations/projects with the closest people in your life because they don’t show a sign that they like to know more or bring them up in conversations. Yes, it only happens very occasionally when you get asked about your books, although the process is not even close to finishing and there are things you’ve already put out there, they are a reality as opposed to books that aren’t until they get published. I bet that if you’d have made money from your blog or your Instagram content, people would want to talk about it, they would be interested to hear more, but to acknowledge creating something in the hopes of helping/inspiring/motivating others and because it makes you happy, so that’s the end game you’re after, isn’t quite as sexy as money making, in this capitalist world we live in. But I digress, so let’s go back to greener pastures since I’ve been wandering around in the ghetto 😂. Ok, yes, I know you understand that people are busy, that they have their own life to think about but, I’ve also been there with you when you’ve talked with them about their stuff and asked about it, showing interest in what they’ve been doing not because you were so interested in that but because that’s what support looks like. So yeah, you did an amazing thing by becoming your own cheerleader and it’s so great that you don’t look to be validated by those around anymore, that you keep on giving yourself the support you need and don’t wait for that to come from another person, that you continue doing what you want to do regardless of others’ opinion or lack of interest. I also want to tell you that, creating content or writing blog posts because it brings you happiness and because you’re hoping to help/inspire/teach those around, it’s a thing to be proud of and I am of you for doing that. 

       There are a lot of reasons for why I’m so proud of you but I can’t write about them all because this letter would turn into a book (hmm, that sounds like a future book idea, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves since you didn’t even publish your first book, yet). But, I would like to mention one more, one that is at the heart of this letter and that is, I’m so freaking proud of you for going through the self-love journey, for understanding that true love is not found at the surface level but it is deep and it requires work. Yes, it is a reason to be proud of because: you weren’t taught about self-love so you had to self-educate; this is a topic that is mostly overlooked but you realized it’s an important one so you’re trying to teach others about it through your example and your creations; you only learned about the need/desire to receive love from others and not from yourself so you had to do some work in order to get disentangled from those cultural/societal norms. And I’m so happy to witness you giving yourself all the love that you need; it makes me proud to see that you aren’t expecting it to come from a romantic partner; I am truly in awe with you for changing your inner talk since it wasn’t one you deserved or conducive to self-love and happiness, but that’s what you knew and grew up with, and yes, it’s not easy to change it after decades of doing it wrong and because the self-negative talk was ingrained in you, so it makes me more proud of you for doing it. 

       Oh, just one more thing… I want to acknowledge another great thing you’ve been creating lately and that is, the celebratory reels. 🤩 So yes, I am really proud of you: for making celebration a monthly habit and creating reels about it; for trying to help others focus on the good things in their life, on their achievements, both big and small, on the little things since they do matter because they add up; for you realizing it’s really an important thing to do because a lot of people don’t really take time to savor the victories, and life in general, and instead they are too concentrated on the next goal/mountain to climb/dream so they forget to celebrate those that are already achieved/climbed. So, I applaud you and I want to tell you to keep on with the good work. (I guess you being your own cheerleader has rubbed on me too. 😂)

       Yes, I am proud of you for many reasons (a whole lot more than I could write here) and before you reply to me to tell me about your wrong doings, but I’m also not blind. So yes, I know you’ve made some choices that don’t sit well with you, I know you’ve been feeling bad because of making them and it affected your life for a bit when those emotions arose. But, you did what you could at the time in order to protect yourself and yes, a few decisions were forced in a way because you wanted to avoid some emotional pain or backlash from other people or going through challenging times. And I know you’ve realized that there were moments when you let your life’s boat take you wherever instead of you stirring its direction, and after some time you thought about how you should have done it differently. The thing is, today you get to see these things clearly because of the distance, because you now know better, because you’ve grown and learned a lot, so please remember that, you did the best you knew and could at the time. So please don’t beat yourself up about those choices or for letting life chose for you because you are doing better now, you are changing the things you don’t like, you have learned from your mistakes and you’re taking the actions needed to not make them again (ok, not all mistakes since you sometimes want to make sure you really are messing it up so you repeat the same mistake a few times, just to be on the safe side 🤣).

       Now at the end, I wanted to remind you that you deserve: to live the life you dream about, so please do everything to make sure that happens; the best, so please stop accepting breadcrumbs instead of going for what you really want; your dreams to come true so please focus on them, not on what you don’t have, and do the work necessary to get there. And the last thing I wanted to say to you is that, I love you and I’m in awe of you. Since you’ve finished reading my letter you now understand why I feel this way about you, so I hope you see yourself through my eyes and realize how truly amazing you are. Thank you for being UNAPOLOGETICALLY YOURSELF! 🙏 I’m really proud of you because of this too and also, because you live your life however you want, disregarding others’ opinions/comments and the cultural rules that don’t fit you.                                                                                                                                           With a lot of love, Nico ❤️                                                                                         

Something to think about:

1. 1. Have you ever written a love letter to yourself? You deserve one.

1. 1. If the answer is YES, congratulations and maybe you could write another one in order to refresh your memory about the amazing human being you are. 

1. 1. If the answer is NO, now it may be a great time to do it. 🤪 So you too can realize how amazing you are. 

P.S. Give yourself some love today. And every day. You deserve it. 💞