Recently as I surfed Facebook I say a sidebar ad fora weight loss product. I looked for the exact ad but couldn’t find it again. The tagline, which I wrote down because it bothered me, was “Finally free to be the real me.”
Like the banner shown here, the message is that until you lose weight, preferrably by putting a foreign object around the entrance to your stomach, you won’t be able to be yourself or to be confident. Sigh. Really?
It’s a rampant concept in our society that unless we are “perfect” we can’t be happy, we can’t be ourselves, we couldn’t possibly have self esteem. No wonder 10 year olds are getting eating disorders!
It’s time to say STOP! It’s time to say ENOUGH! It’s time to say I LOVE ME JUST AS I AM NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!
I heard a song yesterday by Baz Luhrmann called “Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen)”. One of the lines is “don’t read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.” Yes! Exactly! We need to stop comparing ourselves to everyone else, especially those in magazines who are air brushed and spend hours in wardrobe and make up.
So I know you’ve heard this before. You may have even said it yourself. “I don’t need to fix anything in order to love myself.” But do you really believe it?
The truth is, if you don’t love yourself as you are, you won’t love yourself when you make the changes you think you need/should/have to make. I know it’s hard to look in the mirror when you’re 10-100 pounds over weight (or more) by conventional standards. I know it’s hard when you don’t see the face or body you’d like to have. We all struggle. We all have things we don’t like. AND we are perfect anyway. We just have to convince ourselves of that after years of telling ourselves otherwise. It’s a struggle, and it’s worth it. It’ll work a lot better at allowing you to be the real you than losing weight, however you decide to do it.
- Give yourself positive messages in the mirror – look for what you like and focus on it. Tell yourself what’s good about you. If it’s hard at first, pick one thing. As you get used to focusing on that one thing, more things will start to show up.
- Accept compliments graciously. I can’t say this enough times! The positive messages of others will eventually start to get the message through that you’re beautiful and amazing!
- When you hear old negative tapes start to play in your head say “thank you for sharing, I’m up to something else” and replace the negative tape with somethig positive.
- Give yourself a break. Celebrate small successes, they build up to big ones.
- Tell yourself daily: I am amazing and beautiful just as I am – no changes required! Even if you don’t believe it, eventually you will.
No surgery, no change in wardrobe, no new haircut will change your self perception forever. They may make you feel better for awhile and eventually your old “not good enough” messages will start to play again. Only doing the work to truly change the way you see yourself, no matter what you currently look like, will allow you to really “be free to be me”. So get on it, will ya?
Be Beautiful, Be You
Hugs, Christie