Real Beauty
Having a Healthy Self-Image
Like many women, I have had my own personal struggle with maintaining a positive self-image. We are all too familiar with the threats against our good feelings about ourselves. A few that cause us to second-guess our value are the endless pictures of unhumanly beautiful women in the fashion magazines, the teeny clothing sizes that are marketed as “average” and the constant stream of advertising that compels us to believe that we would be eternally happy if we just firmed up some jiggle or lost a little bulk. A case in point was the magazine article I spotted the other day - “Your All Over Makeover.” Now if that idea, that you need a complete and total overhaul of everything, isn’t enough to push you over the edge, then I don’t know what is. The crazy thing is that we don’t get nearly as worked up over our personality traits or character as we do our wrinkled skin or oversized jeans. The other crazy thing is that some of the women I’ve met who have the lowest self-image are among the most giving, creative and talented women I know or else they’re the most physically beautiful ones.
That magazine article got me to thinking about how living healthfully comes back to balance. Not only can our lifestyles, our eating habits, and our priorities get out of whack - so can our way of thinking. We’ve all heard it said that the mind is a powerful muscle. Our negative thoughts about ourselves can strong-arm us into thinking we are something that we aren’t in the most negative sort of way. What’s the big deal with thinking bad thoughts about ourselves? Well, we can convince ourselves that we are not good, that we are not valuable and that we can’t be happy simply because our outside package isn’t wrapped as pretty as we’d like That often causes us to get frustrated, feel sorry for ourselves and begin living an unhealthy reality that didn’t even exist before we dreamed it up.
I reflected back on my years as a teenager and young woman and an ironic thought occurred to me. In my teens, I was the typical young girl, unsure of her self, waiting for others to make a judgment about me before I decided how I felt about myself. In my 20s, at my most petite and fit, I still convinced myself that my size and shape wasn’t adequately perfect. Luckily in my 30s, I’ve been able to experience life. Although the baby weight struggle has caught up with me and responsibilities of house and kids make it difficult to maintain a regular exercise schedule, I feel better about myself for the most part. Why is that? Well, I suppose that life experience reiterates what is really important. I also think that having lived enough time to see things droop, sag and wrinkle convinces us that we need to appreciate whatever youthful features we still have. And I really believe that as time goes on, we are able to cultivate some talents and abilities that go beyond skin deep and we get joy from doing the things we love to do. And really, there’s only so much joy that you can elicit from having eyes without the crows-feet. Not that I don’t revisit that sorry-for-myself feeling sometimes when I’m looking in the mirror and my rear end is jumping around front for some attention - I do some days. But I challenge myself and I ask you to join me in making it a point to work on the things that really matter and ignore some of the things that really don’t. After all, like the Dove commercial says, “Real Beauty” doesn’t have anything to do with what’s on the outside anyway. And that’s a healthy way to look at it.
Written by Jennifer O
Read Jennifer’s blog at www.thinksbyme.com
