This is Optimal Living Daily.

We are enough and we don't need to be perfect by Heather Avery with tiny buddha.com

and I'm Justin Mollick.

I'm going to jump right into our next article as we optimize your life.

We are enough and we don't need to be perfect, by Heather Avery with tinybuda.com.

Quote, you alone are enough.

You have nothing to prove to anybody.

Maya Angelou.

Every day on TV, the media tells us how we should be and how we should look. In mainstream society,

we are taught to identify with our physical body and our possessions. We are led to believe that if we

look a certain way, we will be happier, loved more, and accepted by others. I used to believe this.

I bought into it, hook, line, and sinker. I came across a photo of myself

taken about 12 years ago when I looked radiant. The sun lit up behind me, my skin looked

porcelain, and I had this amazing red hair. I looked at myself and thought how beautiful I was.

At the same time, I looked at that girl in the photo, and she was a stranger.

The girl felt anything but beautiful. She hated herself, felt unworthy of love, and thought

she didn't belong because she wasn't thin enough or pretty enough. Growing up, I was a victim of

child abuse and bullying. It played a large role in my thinking in later years. My father used to call me

his ugly little girl, and he also used to be cruel to my mother who was overweight at the time,

so I knew that when I grew up, I would have to be thin and pretty to be loved. I also had thick

glasses as a child, and kids often screamed the nickname Fish Eyes across the school bus during

middle school years. At this time of my life, my peers excluded me, my father ostracized me,

...