Self-love is not easy. It’s not something you can master overnight. It’s not something you can practice in a year or two. It’s an ongoing process. It’s a constant test. It’s a constant battle that you may not always win but you have to remember that self-love is the only weapon you need to win at life because life will always put you in situations where you have to use it and use it wisely.

Self-love means depriving yourself of the things you love and the temptations along the way because you don’t want to lose yourself. It means learning how to walk away from the people who don’t appreciate you even if they’re all you need and think about. It means being brave enough to say no when everything inside you screams yes. It means choosing to walk alone instead of being around the wrong crowd.

Self-love means setting boundaries and having difficult conversations and ending friendships and relationships that are not serving you well. It means suffering alone for a little while to find long-term happiness. It means making difficult decisions and guarding your heart and protecting yourself from those trying to hurt you.

Sometimes self-love goes against everything you’re feeling and everything you’re thinking. Sometimes self-love means ignoring what people think of you and learning how to believe in yourself without anyone supporting you. Sometimes it means having to be your own cheerleader. Sometimes it means having to do the very thing that you hate to do because no one said self-love was easy. No one said that you won’t have days where it’s easier to throw your pride out the window and just cave into the instant gratification. No one told you that it’s actually harder to be your best friend than your worst enemy.

But being your worst enemy will only cause you pain and disappointment. It will put you in situations that you’re going to regret. It will draw people who don’t appreciate you closer to you. It will make people take you for granted and slowly it will make you believe that you’re not worthy of love and respect. You’ll start believing that you’re not good enough. You’ll start living expecting people to treat you like you don’t matter. You’ll start being okay with not liking who you are and waiting for people to validate you in order to feel better about yourself.

So no one said self-love will be easy, but once you get it, once you nail it, once you truly master the art of self-love, you’ll realize that it was all worth it. You’ll realize that no one has the power to make you doubt yourself and no one has the power to make you question your worth because you have the most important shield, you have the strongest protection…you know who you are and what you deserve and you won’t allow yourself to settle again.

You won’t allow yourself to let anyone dictate or define how you see yourself or how you feel about yourself because sometimes that’s the only way to truly thrive in life.