Personal Growth Planet Blog

What does accepting– even loving– your body have to do with what really matters in life? Why is feeling beautiful important anyway?

After all, wars are being waged, people are losing their jobs, people are starving and suffering, the Earth is changing in many worrisome and scary ways…

Aren’t those the really important things?

When I get all caught up in feeling less than lovely, I start to feel embarrassed. It seems somewhat narcissistic and self-obsessed for me to be stressing out and consumed by my negative perceptions of how I think my body looks.

Yet, when I see magazine covers and ads with women in tight-fitting clothes and curves in only the right places and even when I notice women walking down the street wearing outfits I just know I would look hideous in I still think words like this…

“She’s a beauty…and I’m not.”

These thoughts and more run rampant through my mind when I let them.

What am I missing when I spend all of this time and energy thinking about how I am not pretty, sexy, young, hip, attractive, etc.?

For sure, I miss a lot.

One reaction to this presumed connection between wanting to be beautiful and narcissism, between striving to feel pretty and missing out on the “important” things in life, is to turn away from the body completely. If wanting to be beautiful means I am ignoring what is going on in my community and world, then that desire has got to be “bad.”

The impulse to declare that “I don’t care about my looks anyway” comes up. In some ways, this impulse can feel righteous and most certainly feels “good.”

I’ve tried to pretend that I don’t care about my relationship with my own body and, instead, have poured my energy into attempting to change the world in various ways. Let me tell you, this doesn’t work either.

What tends to happen is that busy-ness of being an activist, protester, advocate, philanthropist, volunteer, caring citizen and more does not change the fact that my inner war continues to rage on. The desire to feel beautiful does not go away, even if it is shunned and deemed to be corrupt.

All of those generous and giving works can start to seem insincere or hollow as well. The depth and authenticity of outward actions are inevitably undermined by the body hatred/self-hatred that is only growing beneath the surface.

THIS is why beauty is important.

Feeling beautiful isn’t merely some narcissistic, “I live my life in a me-bubble” kind of thing. Feeling beautiful comes down to feeling and genuinely knowing my own worth and inner light and goodness. When it comes from within, feeling beautiful shows– in powerful and effective ways that benefit far more than just me or my ego.

A truly beautiful person knows what she (or he) wants to be, do and have in life and lives accordingly. The truly beautiful person walks proudly and confidently into any situation and brings to others and the situation itself a sense of that confidence and buoyancy.

You can’t help but be enriched and lifted up by a person who exudes self-love and appreciation. That person has no need to put others down or to prove his or her own worth in order to feel good. In fact, a person like this can often more easily see and appreciate the beauty in others.

The truly beautiful person is able to be fully present in a moment and to freely share whatever gifts she or he has to offer.

If this sounds idealistic to you, I can understand why. It is a rarity to come upon a person who is truly beautiful in the manner I’m describing. This image of how any one of us could be might even sound impossible and naïve.

Call me naïve, but I do believe that this way of being beautiful– truly beautiful– IS possible and when we look more closely, we can see that there already are plenty of people in the world who exemplify this way of being. Being truly beautiful also may be essential for not only individual happiness and fulfillment but for the betterment of the world.

Embrace your beauty.

I challenge each of us to go within and ferret out what beauty we can find within ourselves. Stop waging war on yourself. When you hear yourself thinking or speaking out loud about how big your nose is, how bulging your belly is or even how puny and stick-like your figure is…STOP!

Even if you let your physical appearance off the critical hook, stop yourself when you declare yourself to be stingy, stupid, slow, old or otherwise less than what you think you should be.

Back up and challenge those thoughts. Ask yourself if those words– no matter how true they seem to you to be– are helping you be truly beautiful. I’m betting that they’re not.

Stop waging war on beauty as well. Look around and intentionally focus on those people and things in your life that move you and evoke appreciation. They might be visually appealing or could be beautiful in other ways. The point is to find genuine beauty around you and let it inspire you to find beauty within you. It doesn’t matter where you start, just that you do start.

Embrace your own beauty and let it show. This doesn’t have to be flashy and it can be your own brand of beauty. It doesn’t matter what you find about yourself that is beautiful, the important thing is that you find beauty in yourself. Value it and allow it to come through.

Shine beautiful beings, shine.

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