I don’t know if you know this, but you’re kind of important. But what’s even more important is your relationship with yourself…

Like, do you even know how amazing you are? Do you tell yourself how amazing you are?

The words you use to talk to yourself are vital to your success, happiness, and health… Because they form the lens through which you view life in general.

Many people think that getting clear skin is a matter of using the right products or eating the right food, but I’d argue that the missing link is your relationship with yourself.

The words you use to talk to yourself, impact your relationship with your SELF.

Your relationship with yourself defines not only how you treat yourself, but it also defines your experience of yourself. How you experience yourself is really, REALLY important… I know I haven’t always been the kindest to myself, especially in times of sub-par skin…

I’ll tell you exactly what I used to think when I looked in the mirror:

“Ugh, I’m tired of looking at you.”
“I’m ashamed.”
“There’s no end to these pimples…”
“Why can’t my skin be good?”
“I’m gross.”
“I’m ugly.”

… and on and on with negative words, that lead to negative emotions and negative actions.

If I look in the mirror and think “Your skin sucks, I’m tired of looking at your face!”, what message am I sending my body?

Certainly not a message of healing, self-love, nor support. In fact, a poor relationship with yourself leads to negative feelings of shame and guilt, that then lead to feelings of anxiety and increased stress — and I know you’ve read my article about how stress impacts your face!

You cannot experience daily doses of self-loathing and expect to heal. These two things do not go together.

You need to repair your relationship with yourself first before you can repair your skin, and it’s actually much easier than it sounds.

Change The Way You Look At Things, And The Things You Look At Change

A lot of people who have acne, including some of my clients, come from a place of exhaustion, frustration, a point where they just want a change. They’re tired of the struggle.

It’s a time where the relationship with self is at its worst — you feel like nothing you do is working, and you feel like your body is betraying you.

This is a false belief, that doesn’t serve you at all.

Your body is always doing its best — but the question is are you thinking your best so that your body can function in a way that helps you, serves you, and heals you?

Can two people faced with a similar situation see it completely differently? Yes — and each of them will be right.

Two people can look at the exact same situation differently, like your skin experiences for instance…

One person can call their experience with acne a struggle, another can call it a journey. Both are statements of truth.

It’s no surprise then that the person calling their experience a struggle truly experienced a struggle — it was hard and frustrating, and in the end, they might feel super exhausted by the whole thing.

On the other hand, someone else can call their experience a journey, or a learning experience, and while it might have been challenging, they might come out of it feeling stronger and better than ever!

When you call any part of your life, or anything you come up against, a struggle, then you are going to struggle through it — because that’s your relationship to the situation.

If you call it a journey, especially a journey of growth, self-development, and as learning — then you will get that.

For this reason, I call my experience with acne a “skin-clearing” journey nowadays, because I don’t see it as a struggle anymore —z I see it as a blessing.

Do you see how just by choosing a word to describe your experience, you are impacting the actual experience?

Language skews the perception of a situation and it affects how you relate to the experience that you’re having.

This awareness alone can be enough for you to subtly shift your words and thoughts to be more positive.

You must choose a language that serves you.

I used to look at my face and think pimples, acne, shitty skin, gross.

Every day I’d reach for my face, expecting pimples, acne, shitty skin.

It took this subtle shift… and the realization that I overused bad words when looking at myself to finally heal.

I started saying the opposite — “I have clear skin”, “I am beautiful!”, “I’m a genius!”… And something inside me started to change. The person I was seeing in the mirror started to change too.

How To Use Affirmations For Clear Skin

You too can reprogram your negative thought patterns, your language choices, the words you use about your experience into something that serves you, excites you, and heals you instead of weakening you.

Another way to do this is through affirmations.

I’m sure you’ve heard of affirmations, positive statements affirming something you want to be true that often start with I am.

For example:

“I am healthy.”
“I have clear skin.”
“I am supported.”
“I trust myself.”
“My body is doing its best.”
“I am safe.”
“My life is full of incredible experiences and learning.”
“I am worthy.”

You can improve your experience of the world around you just by affirming things you want…

Keep saying it to yourself, until you actually believe it — repetition is the key to learning.

Keep in mind that this is constant “work” — which means you need to be consistent. Telling yourself something positive once is not enough — your ego will want to resist the positivity at first because of all the years of training it’s gotten in negative thinking and negative language.

Repeat, repeat, repeat again!

You have to reprogram YEARS of negative messages.

Some people are not fans of affirmations because they think that affirmations are an excuse to say words but DO nothing to actually achieve positive results.

I think the opposite is true. Positive words activate your reticular activation system, which helps your mind look for people and experiences to AFFIRM these words.

When your mom gets a Mercedes, suddenly you notice all the other Mercedes on the streets and realize how common they are. But is everybody else suddenly buying all the Mercedes?

No. But your mind is PRIMED to see them everywhere you go.

Affirmations prime your mind to see what you need to see to create the outcomes you want to create.

My suggestion is to get really creative with your affirmations and program them into your phone so they pop up throughout the day. When you see an affirmation pop up on your phone, try to stop everything you’re doing and say it out loud.

Say the words. Feel the words. Live the words.

But there’s more…

How Mirror Work Changed My Life

Using positive language to describe myself was one thing…

I took it a step further after reading Louise Haye’s book You Can Heal Your Life — where I was introduced to a concept called Mirror Work.

Mirror Work is something Louise, herself, does every single day. It’s a practice of looking at yourself in the mirror and saying positive things to reprogram years of negative self-talk and to improve your relationship with yourself.

After I introduced Mirror Work into my life, my relationship to myself, my skin, and my life changed — in a big, positive way.

This is what you do:

Every time you see yourself in the mirror say, “I love you”

Pause.

“I really love you.”

That’s it.

Seems simple, but really feel it when you say it. Look at yourself in the eyes, smile, and say “I love you. I really love you.”

Without self-love, you cannot function and be your highest and best self — your healthiest self. Without being your healthiest self, how can you go out there and change the world?

Once you start telling yourself regularly that you love yourself, your relationship with yourself will change. In fact, you’ll begin to actually believe your words.

It’s a small shift that will permeate the rest of your life. You’ll find that you’ll treat yourself more kindly, old excuses for why you’re eating unhealthy foods will suddenly stop, and you’ll start attracting amazing people and experiences into your life.

Self-love is really the answer.

Once you love and accept yourself, you’ll find it easier to love others and to receive love too. I can’t stress enough the power of Mirror Work. Start right now!

Final Thoughts

When you start this, you might feel some resistance, some strangeness in your body… But that will go away, only to be replaced with a feeling of inner peace and self-love.

I truly believe that once you change your relationship to yourself, you can change your experience of your life.

When you focus on the things you want, you’ll get more of that. When you focus on what you don’t want, you’ll get more of that.

Start talking about the things that you want more of, and don’t give energy to the things you want less of…

Whatever you decide to think is true — so make sure you are choosing truths that benefit you and heal you.

You are a creative being — just as I am a creative being. The words you use to describe your experience matter.

You don’t need to struggle or suffer. You can actually choose to be happy and healthy.

I talked a lot about ways to be happier and find pleasure in small things in this article.

Gratitude and pleasure are also important in your life. Learn to think about things in a way that brings you more joy, more gratitude — in a positive cycle of love.

You are extremely unique. For the atoms to come together to create you, things had to come together just right… It’s time you recognize that and love yourself more than anything or anyone.

I love you,

Olena

P.S. If you need help on your skin-clearing journey, sign up to get 28 of my BEST hacks for clear skin here!