Everyone…and I mean EVERYONE I know has or has had some sort of issue with their body regarding body image. I’m not convinced that this is a human problem, but I am convinced that it is definitely an issue in economically developed countries. Most certainly we are bombarded here in North America with marketing images of people, young, labeled as beautiful, shown as looking happy with a wide smile beaming across their face, and the conclusion that the marketers are trying to get us to draw is that if we live up to what this image shows and sells, we will live a vibrant and rewarding life. That is quite the sales job – especially when so many of us buy the messages on a subliminal level.
What if you could feel so comfortable in your own skin that you could move in utter freedom and speak freely from your heart? For me, this task has taken a good portion of my life. And I have to remind and reaffirm myself every day that I am worthy of feeling this way. I will share with you how I moved through the tumultuous waters of learning to love the skin I am in and by guiding you through what worked for me, perhaps this will work for you, too.
I was born into a family where beauty abounded. My maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, modeled for Vogue magazine in the roaring 20’s. She was gorgeous to behold. I saw stunning pictures of her as I grew up. She was a casualty of World War II. I am named after her and I really wish I had known her. She positively beamed when she looked into a camera lens. In some of her pictures she has an expression like she is privy to some secret that the rest of us have yet to discover. Yet no one in the family hardly ever spoke about her. So I was left to my imaginings. She was special, like a goddess to me, in my childhood and in young womanhood. She remains an icon in my life.
Yes, Elizabeth has always fascinated me. And I never felt like I could even begin to hold a candle to her beauty – either inside or out – until I realized that I had some interior housekeeping to do. I had to learn that my external beauty truly is a reflection of my perception of myself on the inside. Well, to really achieve this, I had to find a way to stop the war going on inside of me. You know, the one between me and myself where I’m always telling myself that I don’t measure up to other people’s expectations of me, or to my own expectations of myself. I felt full of shame about how I looked and a part of me rebelled at even feeling this shame at all. This was quite an internal battle. Sounds like a losing proposition all around. Yep, time to call Housekeeping!
I had to learn to accept my body as an expression of the Divine, with all of the seeming imperfections I saw. You know, these imperfections: my nose is a funny shape, my legs are too short, my thighs are too heavy (or even FAT!), my ass is too small or not big enough(!)… There’s no end to this negative spiral. But these ‘imperfections’ are part of who I am. And after all, who am I to question the Divine? This realization was pretty humbling. And I felt as if I had been given a cosmic smack down to my ego. Good! I needed that!
I had to spend some serious time discovering and exploring the gifts that the Divine had bestowed upon me, at birth and through all of my life experiences. I looked to see if and how others were doing this. I learned from them and I looked within myself. The more gifts I searched for, the more gifts I found. When I was so busy comparing myself to others and some imagined standard that I had fabricated in my mind, I felt shame and viewed myself in a shameful way. When I realized I was a creation of the Divine and here to give my gifts to the world, I became empowered and was able to contribute my value, confident that I actually had value to give.
Maybe I discovered Elizabeth’s secret after all! And I learned how to channel my own inner goddess.
My mind made all kinds of meaning about how, because I was named after Elizabeth, I had better measure up to her image. And then there was the fact that I looked different from her. The messages I heard growing up were that I clearly was not beautiful and everyone else just had to bear my un-beautiful presence. So much for how my mind made meaning. But you see how such meaning can really put a damper on the sheer joy of being alive. I was caught up in The Comparison Game. Hook, line, and sinker. And I never said anything to anyone about it, so I held it in and had no clue how to deal with it. Such heaviness in what could have otherwise been an enjoyable life. Herein lay the beginnings of chronic pain for me. I was hiding my shame. And unknowingly, I had chosen the meaning that my body image was not enough. I had no clue that this was a choice on my part. It felt like it was an indelible label everyone had put on me, and, for the longest time, I believed that this was just the way I would always be, everyone would always see me this way, and that I would never be ‘enough’, no matter what I did, because of what I looked like.
Here are a few pointers for relieving the stress and anxiety you may have around your body image, bringing peace and ease into your life, and even up-leveling the joy factor for you.
1) Check your body attitude – and give it a well-deserved adjustment if needed. Our beliefs about ourselves are often based in meaning that we made about a past event and we carry that forward with us into the present. What are the beliefs you have about how you look? How you ‘should’ look? Do you have a belief that you may have picked up from your mother, and she from her mother, about the way it is – “I’m not one of those beautiful people”…or anything like that? Take some time to take stock in the beliefs you carry with you about ‘how it’s supposed to be’ or ‘ this is just the way it is’ – are they actually true? Are they serving you? How can you shift them so that they might serve you better?
2) Love yourself exactly the way you are! There are all kinds of body shapes, sizes, abilities, and talents. Your body is the one you came with. It is here. Give it good food, plenty of water, rest, and exercise – and most importantly – love. Cultivate self-love like your life depended on it – because the quality of your life DOES depend on your ability to develop compassion and love for yourself. Your body is not who you are, only what you happen to look like. What a world of difference between those two! Your beauty is based on what is happening on the inside of you, your soul, on your character, on your contribution to the world. What’s happening on the outside is merely window dressing. Just imagine what a different world it would be if we could all see with our eyes what we look like from the inside-out. How would things shift then in terms of the degree of inner peace or inner turmoil we experience?
3) We need you to be YOU! Please bring your gifts, quirks, and everything else that you are to the rest of us. We have been waiting for you!
4) Bring the breath. This is your go-to tool for so many things – especially when your mind starts to spin negative thoughts about what you look like and any other derogatory comment that arises. Do yourself a huge favor: do NOT complete a negative sentence about yourself! When you hear that negative voice in your head, shift your attention away from the thought and onto your breath. Breathe into whatever body sensations are coming up for you and stay with those. By doing this, you are bringing yourself smack into the present moment. The mind lives in the past or the future, but cannot abide the present. By focusing on your breath, happening in the here and now, you can move out of the mind’s chatter and allow all of that negativity to pass back into the ethers from whence it came.
5) Drop out of The Comparison Game. The only way to win at this game is to stop playing. When we learn to stop judging other people, we cease the habit, which pretty much everyone has, of comparing ourselves to others. The real work in this pointer is in not judging yourself. You are human. To be human is to be NOT perfect. This is a fact. When we align with this fact and come to terms with its reality, we discover a whole new level of peace, ease, and inner satisfaction with ourselves.
Let’s review:
- Remember that you are a Divine creation.
- Recognize and nurture your gifts – the world is waiting for them!
- Check your body attitude and adjust if and when needed.
- Love yourself exactly the way that you are!
- Bring the breath.
- Do not complete a negative sentence about yourself.
- Drop out of The Comparison Game.
How we feel about ourselves, both on the inside and the outside can truly make such a difference in the level of stress and anxiety that we carry with us. We must realize that we have a choice in our viewpoint of what we deem “beautiful.” And are we referring to our inside or our outside? It’s so interesting to me that when we clean house on the inside, the radiance we cultivate from that cleaning is so prominent and pronounced in how it expresses itself on our outside. No matter what our body shape, size, or style, when we love our life from the inside out, it shows up as so obvious to other people that we are living in all of our beauty and brilliance. When you love the skin you are in, the world cannot miss or deny such beauty.
