We talk a lot about self love but we rarely talk about self-worth and honestly, self-worth is far more important. Until you believe in your own self-worth you won’t believe in making room for self-love.

I think a lot of us have been brought up to hold ourselves back. We’ve been told to ‘not brag’ or beware of ‘showing off’. Unintentionally, many of our parents have encouraged us to be smaller than we are, not because they don’t have our best interests at heart but because there’s a certain Britishness that’s uncomfortable with external displays of self-worth. That led to our classmates reminding us time and time again that we shouldn’t put our head above the parapet.

How many times at school did you here sneering classmates turn around and say, “Urgh she really loves herself”? A lot right? As if loving yourself was an insult? It’s not their fault. They’ve been taught to be uncomfortable with themselves, their talents, their skills, their achievements and that’s only because their parents have been taught the same thing. Remember the saying, ‘Children should be seen and not heard’? In Britain it doesn’t just apply to children. It also applies to success, to ability, to wins.

While we may have always been taught that this is the ‘polite’ thing to do, the reality is, it’s actually pretty damaging. It stops us appreciating our self worth. Instead, we feel ashamed of our brilliance, we play our extraordinariness down and, HERE’S THE THING, we subconsciously but enormously resent that. Big time. Even if we never admit it to ourselves, we hate that we’ve been taught to be small, to shrink, to stay quiet about how fucking fabulous we are. Resentment never led to anything positive and, inevitably, because we are unaware of what is happening, we find ourselves projecting.

So, eventually, you find yourself saying some girl ‘loves herself’ (maybe it’s in your head, maybe it’s out loud) but you feel annoyed, uncomfortable, maybe even a bit disgusted by her obvious displays of self-worth, her obvious lack of self-consciousness. You might decide you don’t like her, or that she’s arrogant, and not ‘your type of people’.

But really, you’re just resentful because you’ve been taught to carry that self-consciousness around and let me tell you, that shit is heavy and it feels heavier when you’re faced with someone who’s learned to shed it or perhaps not even pick it up at all.

So when you're faced with someone who’s doing well, who’s confident, who’s comfortable with their own success (and, of course, who isn’t a dick…because those people exist too) and maybe you feel your emotional heckles go up, know this: it’s not them. It’s you…and I don’t mean that aggressively. I mean, we’ve been taught to believe certain things, to think that certain things are vulgar when actually, we need to learn to self-celebrate, to self-approve without shame, to appreciate our self-worth.

Because what we’ve been taught fundamentally undermines our belief in our own self-worth and that’s serious. That kind of thing makes you believe that certain things aren’t for you, or for any suitably humble, modest person. It makes you think that only unpalatable people, horrible people, shallow people are obnoxious enough to be proud of themselves and their achievements. It makes you block your own opportunities and your own potential because deep down you’ve been taught to think that you’re, quite simply, not worth it.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you are worthy of everything and anything you can imagine. You’re worthy of prioritising yourself, of treating yourself, of being kind to yourself. No matter what you’ve been taught to think, you are worthy of it all.