This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
Have you ever asked yourself this question? If you haven’t, congratulations! I really admire your self-esteem! If, on the other hand, you have questioned your beauty at some point in your life, let’s keep digging into this subject for a moment.
This subject will probably make more sense to my female readers, since I firmly believe we tend to judge ourselves harder than anyone else. But you are totally welcome to keep reading if you’re male and you want to see how the female brain works sometimes. I can’t promise you’ll understand us better; we are kind of complicated, as you may be aware.
Anyway, by ‘judging,’ I mean the way we talk to ourselves when we look in the mirror on day two of ‘shark week’ (a.k.a., our period). I’m pretty sure for most of us those aren’t the only days when we go into “let’s point out everything I don’t like about the way I look” mode.
I’ve been my biggest critic since I was a little girl. To be completely honest with you, until a few months ago, I didn’t like sharing pictures of myself when I was younger because I was ashamed of my… lack of beauty (to say it nicely). My hair wasn’t straight or curly. It didn’t have a defined shape. It was whatever it wanted to be on any given day, meaning I was the girl with the crazy hair. I had huge, dark circles under my eyes. I wasn’t thin; neither was I fat. I was something in the middle. Frankly, I didn’t like to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t feel pretty at all. And obviously, the feedback I got at school didn’t help me think any differently. Hence, I grew up believing I was an ugly little girl.
Every aspect of life has ups and downs, so I had moments when I didn’t feel pretty enough and other times when I didn’t even think about it. I’m beyond grateful for my real friends from high school who helped me to see myself a little differently. We had such wonderful friendships that my memories from high school are mostly of good times and lots of laughter.
However, when we believe something, it’s always in the back of our minds, and it pops up from time to time. My time in dental school back in Venezuela was not as blessed as my time in high school. It’s not that I didn’t have amazing friends there, but I think it was more competitive outside the circle of my close friends. Because I believed I wasn’t pretty, I was always internally comparing myself to the women around me and finding them prettier. For a long time, I told myself, “Be as smart as you can, and that may help to distract people from your physical appearance.”
Being smart worked sometimes, but other times I had to deal with really mean feedback from a few people. Once someone told me, “Even if you covered my girlfriend with tons of sh**, she would look prettier than you.” That comment hurt me for long time because I wasn’t confident or aware enough to know better. It used to pop up in my darkest moments of self-criticism, and my thoughts and those words were not a good combination. The good thing is that I always have kept my kindness level pretty high and my heart as pure and big as possible, so at some point I started to realize I was loved and appreciated for who I was, internally instead of for how I looked externally.
I got a little better about my self-criticism regarding my beauty (or perhaps the lack of it) while I was married. I was busy being a wife, and I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. However, the moment we started having cheating issues, the belief that I wasn’t pretty enough came back stronger than ever. I was not only convinced I wasn’t pretty enough, I added to that everything you can fill in the blank before the word ‘enough’: “I’m not smart enough; I’m not caring enough; I’m not rich enough.” (Yes, even that). In short, I didn’t think I was enough, and I was convinced for some time that was the reason he had to look for someone else.
In my humble opinion, this is a common reaction to the angry feeling we get when we find out our person has been cheating. We want to know why, and we would do anything to find an answer, even if that means destroying ourselves with our own self-talk.
I keep working myself out of that destructive behavior of judging myself by reading masses of self-help books, listening to great podcasts, and of course practicing meditation. It hasn’t been an easy job, though. As I explained at the beginning, my belief that I’m not pretty enough has been with me ever since I can remember. I’ve improved a lot, but I still have moments when I don’t feel pretty enough externally.
I’ve been doing two things that have helped me a lot to improve my self-talk regarding my physical appearance. I would like to share them with you in case you too go into “let’s point out everything I don’t like about the way I look” mode sometimes. The first thing I do whenever I catch myself criticizing my body in front of the mirror is force myself to smile and find one thing—just one—that I think is pretty about me. Most of the time I end up laughing at my inner critic and snap out of it. The other thing I am doing is a daily practice. Every time I finish a workout, I turn my timer on for one minute and I thank my body for everything it is and everything it does. This practice has really made an impact on the way I see myself. Give it a try! It’s only one minute. 😉
We are indeed enough my beautiful souls. We all have a beautiful light inside; we just need to let it out to start seeing the beauty everywhere—even in us!
Love,
Irene
