Self-Love, be Intentional | Caitlyn Roux | TEDxYouth@CapeTown

I have a question for everyone that question is what defines you as a person what makes you you a lot of us tend to define ourselves through our physical image of jobs or bank balance and a lot of the time to what others have to say about us I used to find myself through three things in high school I was quite the people pleaser I wanted everyone to like me because I thought that the more likeable I was the further that I would get in life because being popular was so cool and I tried so hard to become this person that everyone would like a majority of the time I was living my life through other people's opinions of me from the age of 16 I started to obsess over my weight so I wanted to look like the cover girl in Cosmo magazine you know the Photoshop one my diet consisted of just salads and I used to look chic on every single calorie that my body was consuming I even went to the extreme of harming my body for many years to try and get rid of the food that I'd eaten because I needed the thigh gap and I needed the thin waist I was in a relationship for the last two years of school and I truly believe that my happiness came from someone else giving it to me I had put so much pressure on this other person to be everything to me to make me feel worthy and make me feel like I was enough and then when the relationship ended I was completely broken I didn't know how I was gonna stand on my own and I felt like I lost a little sense of identity that I had and I was terrified of being alone I know today that the only reason I felt so empty and broken inside was because I didn't know myself at all so it was the hardest five months hardest and most emotional five months of my life and I didn't know how to deal with how I was feeling all this pain or this emotion and one day I called the person that I used to be with and I asked are you happy and he said yes and it was from that moment that I decided that I was going to be happy you and that I was gonna find a happiness that worked for me that I wasn't going to deal with this pain and these waves of emotion anymore so I started journaling my breakup I wrote down my feelings and my thoughts and recently looking back on my journal I realized how would end my writing off with positive affirmations towards myself things like you can do this kids and I'm a huge fan of quotes so I was putting quotes all around my room in places that I could see is the and I started reading motivational books and positivity and powerful thoughts and how to change your mind I was trying everything to get through how I was feeling something that seemed so impossible but just like there's positive affirmations that I was writing towards myself I knew that I had the strength to move on I just didn't know how strong I actually was so I had to pick myself up in some way and I did I slowly started to and for the first time in my life I realized just how capable I actually was of standing on my own and being my own person I just had to learn through loss that all I needed to have was me so for the whole of high school I laid those three things define me other people's opinions of me my weights a relationship and by allowing these things to find me I let them control and consume my life and I was looking for happiness in those three places but I could never ever seem to quite find it I believe that happiness is something that you create for yourself by yourself on your own terms the world that we live in is something that we create for ourselves and I'm not talking about society's world I'm talking about the individual world that each and every one of us experience because as we shape our world and our lives we shape ourselves too so I've learned through picking myself up through a breakup and letting go of the things that I thought to find me just how important it was for me to take the time out to figure myself out get inside my own mind and understand myself and there's only one part of the universe we can all be certain about improving and that's ourselves I'm currently reading a book called the 15 invaluable laws but John Maxwell and in this book he says something that really made me think he says as children our bodies automatically a year goes by we get taller we become stronger become capable of doing more things facing new challenges but a lot of people carry with them a subconscious belief into adulthood that spiritual mental and emotional growth occurs automatically to now just think about that for a second because I was one of those people that believed that those things occur automatically but it's not personal growth has to be intentional we have to take ownership of our growth process because we do not simply improve by accident think about a close friend of yours the longer you spend time with them the more you learn about them and the closer you become and it's exactly the same with yourself the more you focus your energy on getting to know yourself spending time by yourself the more you will learn about yourself and the closely who becomes yourself and let me tell you that is such a beautiful feeling when you realize how close you are becoming to yourself I've decided to make myself a priority in my life and self-discovery is the best gift that I'm giving myself and it's the one gift I wish I could get each and every one of you you don't have it already it has allowed me to grow in my own terms without someone else telling me how to and by doing this I'm becoming the person who wants to be rather than the person I was told to be and a lot of people think that putting yourself first is selfish but putting yourself first simply means taking for me it simply means taking a stand looking at yourself and saying that I'm going to do everything in my power to see myself succeed and reach my dreams I'm gonna make the best choices in my life including the people that I surround myself with people that add nothing but value to me and once you decide to love who you are you can then take that love that you have for yourself and spread it to other people because without that self-love you limit your ability to pour into the lives of other people and add value to them living the best version of yourself inspires other people to live the best version of themselves - I was speaking to one of my friends the other day and she asked me two questions she said katelynn how did you decide that you wanted to make a change in your life within yourself and your mindset and secondly how did you make it stick so I had to think quite hard about what she asked me but I said to her I knew that I wanted to make a change in my life the moment that I decided that I was going to be the only person that was going to Turman my happiness that I was going to be the only person I was going to define me not those three things and how I made a stick I pushed I pushed through all the negative thoughts I pushed through all the negative self-talk and it wasn't easy easy it's never easy but I always had a craving to know myself deep and if you want anything that badly anything is possible I know that the relationship that I have with myself is the most important relationship the relationship that you have with yourself is the most important relationship and how you see yourself and how you treat yourself is how you see and how you treat other people how can you expect to give love if you can't give love to yourself first ask yourself the day if the relationships you have in your life by adding value to you or they help you grow into the person you want to become and then ask yourself but am i adding value to me and these two questions are very important because the people that you surround yourself with in life have a very big impact and influence on you and your growth but you have the biggest impact and influence on you so if the answer to these questions are no then decide today it's maybe make a change and if you decide to make that change don't just place a small amount of value on yourself because rest assured the world will not raise your price know your worth start focusing yourself developing yourself improving yourself good things will come and know that the space between where you are now currently and where you want to be is growth and the thing called life that happens in between is hard but it's really really beautiful thank you [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,906,075

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Love, Self improvement, Youth

Id: DCNOJmmHLkQ

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2017