Would you ever love someone who looked like you?

Someone with stretch marks on their thighs and a weird mole on the back of their neck? Someone with a crooked nose or very thin lips?

Sometimes I look in the mirror and stare at the blackheads on my nose, and I think, “Who could ever love someone with a strawberry for a nose?”

How would you look at a woman who lacked a thigh gap? Would you look away in disgust? Would pinch that skin and tell her to get rid of it? …

Thanks to YouTube, Medium, Twitter, and literally all of the Internet, we’re all free to give advice. That has its perks and its downsides. The perk is that we can learn how to love ourselves, how to change a tire, and how to cut off toxic people in our lives with a simple Google search.

The downside is that some of the tips people give are ludicrous, and all they accomplish is making others feel like absolute crap. These are some of those tips and why you shouldn’t follow them.

1. Always Be Productive

Do ten push-ups during commercials. Listen to an educational podcast…

There’s lots of articles with inspirational quotes out there in the Interwebs, but I wanted to write an article with quotes that just celebrated words. So, while, yes, there are inspirational quotes in this piece, there’s also more. And I didn’t pick anything that didn’t make my heart feel like it was going to beat out of my chest.

Here are fifteen quotes I think you’ll enjoy, whether you’re a writer or reader.

“So that’s your girl?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, still staring after her. “I don’t know if I’m hers, but she’s definitely mine.”

— Abigail Johnson, Every Other Weekend

…

As creators and artists, we often wrap our entire identities around this one thing that we are: a writer, a painter, a director, a baker, a sculptor.

We have our ears on the ground, our heads in the sky, our eyes on the world, always on the lookout for inspiration and new ways to improve our craft. We seek unique approaches to tell our stories, whether through a song or a painting — and that’s fine. As artists, everything around us can and should be our inspiration.

But because we’re always stuck inside this world of whatever-we-are, we’ve subconsciously tied…

How often do you say you’re stressed? A couple of times a week, if not daily? In a podcast episode of “On Purpose” with Jay Shetty, Harvard Psychologist Susan David said that we’re constantly saying we’re stressed.

David said that the issue with using the word “stressed” to express how we feel is that it’s an umbrella term. You can use it when you’ve been studying for hours or when you have a problem you don’t know how to solve. …

Lots of us wish our lives were better, grander, more exciting. We wish we could afford hotels with views of clear blue water or live in the types of homes we find on Pinterest. Sometimes our lives don’t feel like enough.

But there’s beauty in so much more than we typically realize. You can find grandness even in the smallest of events, adventure even if you’re stuck at home, and love in the most unlikely places. Life’s better when you romanticize it.

Here are thirty things that make life worth living, no matter what it looks like.

1. A sunset unlike…

Sometimes I don’t like the way my body looks. When I start gaining weight, my face becomes a little rounder, and it’s the thing I’m most insecure about. Some days I wish I could scrub away my acne scars.

I love how my eyelashes are only curly at the very tips. I love my legs. I love the color of my hair and my eyebrows and the way my arms can push me up when I do a push-up. I love that I laugh a lot — too much, my mom would argue.

I’ve never really lived. I’ve never been…

The cupcakes were on a three-tier stand right beside us. My seven-year-old niece was across the table from my sister and me when she told us she wanted another cupcake.

“Get another one,” I said. “It’s fine.”

She smiled shyly, hesitantly, but just continued to eye them. Then she said: “It’s cause my body wants another cupcake, but my brain knows that if I eat another one I’ll have a sugar rush.”

My sister and I looked at each other, shocked for a moment about what she’d just said. Then, I laughed because I couldn’t believe it. What kind of…