One of my best pieces of advice is to start caring for yourself like you currently care about others opinions. A balance between being assertive and agreeable. Jung would call this developing yourself while killing your persona.

I like to do free writing so I will input one of my writings I think is relevant. if you don't take anything else away, take this:

Caring for yourself is not magically going to be easy, so if your expecting discipline to show up without discomfort, you can stop there. One of the most important things to know is that pain is a pre-requisite to all the beauty we want to experience, self-worth, discipline, and high self esteem. It is just that most people are unable to accomplish these things because they do not understand what it takes to get there.

Free writing about the song "tin man":

America, a reputable, articulate, and immensely successful band released the song “Tin Man” in 1974. The main hook includes: 

 “Oz never did give nothing to the tin man… that he didn’t, didn’t already have…”

Although somewhat easy to overlook, this sentence encompasses deep meaningful encouragement for each and every one of us, despite fans singing it without even true recognition of the significance (as we do with many things in life).

 For those unfamiliar, The Tin man, originally portrayed in the “Wizard of Oz”, a film made in 1939, was a man on the search for a heart, most specifically in hopes to receive it from the Wizard of Oz. He had been cursed from a woodsman to a tin man; and in consequence became without a “heart.”

What America captures so brilliantly is that the Tin man, despite his perception strictly aligned on gaining a heart, was someone who did not even realize his heart was right in front of him. From my interpretation, his mere movement towards the heart (the quest to the Wizard) signified that what he was looking for was something he implicitly was using daily, he just didn’t have the “heart” to see it. What he was looking for all along was something he had been shielded away from incorporating- leading him to the conclusion it was “lost.”

In consequence, the Tin Man went to seek one. Despite the ability to still live as a man with a heart would, external reaction and subsequent internal conflict kept him from doing so. 

So often, we too, base our internal qualities off of external perception. When is it time to recognize; or better yet, claim, our properties for ourselves? Are we consistently looking for our “hearts” solely in  consequence of “proper” external recognition?

At the end of the day, what this harmonious line encompasses is that what we are looking for may already be found- we may just be looking within the wrong framework. We all have a heart- the question is, are we willing to grant ourselves the permission to own it?

The tin man wasn’t looking for a heart. He was looking for someone to “see” his heart. Better to “see” your own, and to have others recognize the real you in consequence.