“BE YOUR OWN YOU”

You’re seeing all these angles of your own life, and then you compare it to other
people’s lives when you don’t see what they’re going through, you just see the good
parts of what they’re going through, am I right?
And so, I say to you, when you start to compare yourselves to other people, please
change the channel in your mind to something else, because I think that when it comes
to how we see ourselves, other people are really mean, but we’re really mean to
ourselves and so it’s easy to get confused, and we do get confused and you start
feeling like you’re not special, or you’re not different, or you have nothing important to
say. We all feel like that sometimes,
but what I want you to right now is, if there’s one thing you remember from this moment
from this time, from where I’m standing, remember what I’m about to say. You need
to look into the mirror in the morning and not tell yourself that you’re not special, or
you’re not good enough, you’re not pretty, or you’re not awesome.

I’m gonna tell you right now the things you actually are not. These are the things
you really are not. You are not the opinion of somebody who doesn’t know you. You
are not damaged goods just because you made mistakes in your life. You are
not going nowhere just because you haven’t gotten where you want to go yet. Those
are the things you actually are not.

Now, I want tell you what you are. You are your own definition of beautiful and
worthwhile, that’s what you are. You are someone who is wiser because you made
mistakes, not damaged, wiser. You are somebody who could be at this moment, right
now, sitting there, there, there, there, you are going through whatever you’re going
through whatever in your life that’s stressing you out, or confusing you, or making you
upset. You are wiser because you’ve made those mistakes. You are someone who’s
brave enough to take chances. You are someone who was rained on over and over
again, and kept on putting one foot in front of the other. I think that’s so much better
than never having made a mistake, never having messed up or having failed. I think that
the pain we go through when we make mistakes makes us stronger. You know it’s not
about perfection; it’s about just getting on with things sometimes. Sometimes you just
get credit for getting up and going on with things, and you don’t have to do it perfectly. I
think that we mistake our mistakes for damage, and we think other people judge us for
them, but I want you to know the way that I see mistakes is, they don’t make you
damaged, they make you clean.”

~Taylor Swift