We are all works in progress. What we aren’t are problems to be solved.

The trouble is, for every facet of self that exists, there is a company or person seeking to exploit our humanity in the name of improvement. Buy this product.Take this course. Only the purchase of this thing can save you from your average-human-status and elevate you to the shiniest version of you. It’s groundbreaking! It’s the latest trend for Spring! Everyone else who matters is doing it!

Despite how pervasive the messaging can be, believing that our worth is dependent upon external, surface-level factors (controlled by others who profit off of our insecurities), is still our choice.

Practicing self-love is a possible choice for each of us, too. It’s the requisite antidote to the sense of inadequacy society imparts.

Practicing self-love begins with recognizing the ways we’ve farmed out our worth. It means realizing that those who may have taught us we were unlovable or not enough was misinformed and insecure, themselves. It means speaking lovingly to ourselves, daily.

I love and accept myself as I am.

The first time we say it we may find it hard to believe or awkward to utter. It’s important that we practice saying those words every day, regardless.

I love and accept myself.

As I am.

Not once we get X, and once we change Y. Today. Right now. With our cellulite and our weird decision-making process, our skin color, our anxieties, our age, and our track record. Lovable. Acceptable. No more or less deserving of compassion than anyone else.

Think how easily we extend grace to others. How we take in the whole of them, flaws and all, and still deem them worthy of love.

We must not withhold from ourselves what we give without conditions, to others.

When we love and accept ourselves, fundamentally, we realize our worth was never up for debate or dependent on external factors. It just is. Like gravity. Like the moon.

Rooted in that knowing, we become immune to predatory marketing. We choose how we grow, instead of being sold who to become. And we’re able to view external markers appropriately: potentially fun, entirely optional, and never determinants of our worth.