Short messages on Mental health, stress and anxiety issues from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
Recognise your rights and protect them. Believe you deserve to be treated with respect and dignity at all times. Stop apologising for everything.
Understand that your rights, thoughts, feelings, needs and desires are just as important as everyone else’s – but remember they are not more important than anyone else’s.
The reactions you have to others gives you more information about yourself than about them – what you do and don’t accept about yourself.
Originality is beautiful. Big brown eyes, green eyes, blue eyes alike. Your natural skin tone is beautiful. Your hair color and your smile. Your voice, your laugh, and your personality. You are truly beautiful just the way you are!
Don’t look for people who will solve all your problems; look for those special few who will sit down and face them with you.
Treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. The amount of abuse you tolerate in your relationships is often equal to the amount of abuse you heap on yourself.
No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of anxiety can change the future.
If you naturally avoid something and worry about it, it won’t go away and it may escalate. Find the most direct route of solving the worry and take action.
You can decide not to let others’ actions and opinions invade your heart and mind. You can decide whom to walk beside into tomorrow, and whom to leave behind today.
You may not be able to control all the things people do to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.