OK - so picture this. You're at home in front of the mirror. Telling yourself exactly what you think of yourself. Too fat. Too pasty. Too little. And that's just your little finger you're looking at. You don't even think of paying yourself one single compliment. Are you your own worst enemy? Enter the bully - she can pick you in a moment. She knows she can take a shot at you and you'll fall down in a heap, and you know why? Because she's actually on your side, she's picking you to pieces in the same way that you treat yourself. There's really only one lasting solution to the bullying nightmare. You've gotta learn to ILY yourself and understand that it's not your problem. ILY is short for I LOVE YOU, and this self-help book for teen girls teaches the importance of loving yourself and others so you can be happy in the teenage years. 14 year-old Australian teenager Julia Weber knows only too well what it's like to be bullied, both in person and via cyberspace. She has become an anti-bullying campaigner and now fills the pages of ILY with heart-warming, witty and practical advice for teen girls about everything from bullying and low self esteem to gratitude and forgiveness. Julia uses affirmations from the world's most famous self help author Louise L Hay, writing teen translations of her words which are fresh and relevant. She speaks at conferences, participates in research and is part of a youth advisory panel which advises on counselling services for young people.

ILY (I LOVE YOU)

One Teen Girl's Guide To A Bully-Proof AdolescenceBy JULIA WEBER

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2011 Julia Weber and Lisa Sweeney
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-0228-1

Contents

Introduction....................................................................ixI LOVE ME, WHO DO YOU LOVE? ... self belief....................................1IF THEY JUMPED OFF A CLIFF ... belonging.......................................19THERE'S ALWAYS ONE ... bullying................................................37THAT'S AWKWARD ... self-consciousness..........................................55TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT! WHO DO WE APPRECIATE? ... gratitude.....................69I'M GONNA MAKE YOU PAY ... forgiveness.........................................87IT'S NOT THAT HARD ... happiness...............................................105

Chapter One

I LOVE ME, WHO DO YOU LOVE?........self belief

How often have you beaten yourself up over something that's gone wrong? Most of us go through each day, finding fault with the way we look or act at every available turn. These kinds of words often fly around in our heads:

I look so chat, nobody really wants to be friends with me I'm so hopeless, I'm always forgetting everything I'm so lame, everyone else is going to pass this test but me I'm so fat, I must look like an elephant standing here next to that skinny girl I wish I was taller/shorter, browner/fairer, blue-eyed/brown-eyed etc, etc I'm so dissed, why did my brother get my Mum's beautiful eyelashes instead of me? I suck at math. I never get anything.

Call an ambulance!

Checking ourselves out in the mirror can sometimes feel like we've accidentally woken up in the middle of one of our worst nightmares. Things are changing so fast.

One day we look quite regular and everything seems to be coming along just fine. The next day we go into the bathroom for a bit of random tooth brushing, look at our reflection and say: What? When did I get acne? What is that gross thing on my face? Oh wait, it's my nose. Did I get run over by a bus while I was asleep?

The freckles we just accepted as the quality of a cutie pie last year now look really festy as well, and ever since that chick in our class told us that skinny jeans are "socially unacceptable" we are left standing in front of our closets, unable to decide whether we own anything not totally hideous anymore.

You look hot

There's nothing quite as awesome as the feeling we get when someone tells us we look gorgeous. But for every one of those there seems to be ten others saying things that shoot our self esteem down in flames. And after we've suffered one of those setbacks, it doesn't matter how many sick selfies we take, we can't find one decent photo of ourselves to use as our facebook profile pic.

Other times we replay an embarrassing moment or a failure over and over in our heads, putting ourselves through the embarrassment and humiliation again and again. Every time we pull the memory back into our heads it makes us feel worse, and we convince ourselves that it is actually more horrendous than it really was in the first place. Soon the emotion we are feeling comes pretty close to self-hatred, and we're saying things like:

I'm so stupid, I'm never going to amount to anything Everyone must hate me now, who'd want to hang around with me after such a pathetic performance

We can keep wallowing in these thoughts or we can rise above them with the help of our own minds and hearts.

Love the one you're with

This is where ILY comes in to save the day. If you've just crawled out from under a rock, we should tell you that ILY is short for I Love You and can be used in every possible situation - to sign off on the net, as we say goodbye to friends or family on the phone, or just to express unbridled passion for something or someone. ILY Glee! ILY cookies and cream ice cream. ILY chillaxin' with my besties. Good night, Mum - ILY.

Sometimes our hearts are filled with so much love we feel like we're going to explode. But before you go wasting all that good lovin' vibe on your latest crush or your favourite band, think about offering it to someone much more significant to you.

Who's the most important person in your Universe?

There is only one answer that we're accepting right at this moment, and it's YOU. You're the only dude who's gonna hang around from the moment you come out of your Mummy's..... (ah, never mind, you know where you come from) until you take your last breath as a decrepit old person (no, I agree, I'm never gonna get old either). So you had better start liking YOU a whole lot more otherwise you're gonna get bored and snappy with yourself and there's no getting away from YOU, not even for a quick time-out.

Don't worry about people thinking you're up yourself if you ILY yourself. Don't concern yourself with anything that anyone has to say about this, because in the beginning you probably won't tell anyone anyway. The word is not yet out there on the street that you're in love with yourself. But I'm here to tell you right now – loving yourself is the ONLY way to be truly happy. ILY!

There's already millions of people hiding in bathrooms and bedrooms around the world every day. They're not just plucking unsightly nose hairs or trying to decide where to put their toenail clippings. They are (quietly) telling themselves how good they are and it's making them feel a whole lot better. Many of these ILY people are working with the help of the Guru of Affirmations, the awesome Louise L Hay. She has changed my life and I've never even met her. She could change your life too if you follow her simple rule of saying affirmations every day.

It's simple – look deeply into your own eyes

Stand in front of the mirror and say to yourself: "I love you (insert your own name here) with all my heart. Say it to yourself (while nobody's around) every day and you'll trick your brain soon enough into believing it. Then watch your ability to make things happen for yourself go through the roof!

When we keep dissing ourselves all the time we start to believe that everything is wrong. But the great thing is, it's just as easy to turn that around and talk ourselves into believing in ourselves. Once you do that, I can guarantee you that you'll be happy, leaving aside hormones and the occasional teenage mood swing. And that's OK too.

So let's get started

Take this book into your room with you and start using the affirmations listed at the end of each chapter to get what you want out of life. My bedroom wall is completely plastered with affirmations and I get great support and pleasure from them every day.

I am extremely grateful to Louise L Hay for teaching me so early in life that I can turn things around for myself easily and quickly just by changing my thoughts. (Oh, and I guess I should thank my Mum here, because she's the one who gave me the affirmation cards in the first place). I use the affirmations, but I also write original versions of them that are more personal and individual to me, and I'm sharing them with you in these pages.

Let's start a revolution and see if we can make ourselves and all our friends happy. It's possible, all we need to do is talk...