From the time a little girl can (barely) talk, princess mania can hijack her self-esteem. Be it fairytales or excitement over how cute she looks, she’s often taught to value beauty over intelligence, waiting for Prince Charming over harnessing Girl Power. The idea is further reinforced in her teen years, where being sexy equals being popular. Small wonder females learn to put a premium price on appearance and drive themselves crazy because they don’t like how one or more of their body parts looks. Yet since the relationship we have with ourselves is the most important relationship of all – one that defines all others – it’s crucial to trade that self-loathing for self-esteem.
So how exactly do you do it?
For starters, take a good look at all the negative self-dialogue you indulge in and ask yourself what triggers it. Is it airbrushed images of perfection? Is it the humility that was drilled into you as a child, where feeling beautiful implied egotism? Is it being taught to treat everyone else as better than yourself? Whatever it is, once you recognize that it’s based in erroneous thinking, you can start to challenge its validity.
Next, you’ll learn to question the usefulness of such thoughts – how they make you feel, what purpose they fulfill, how you would feel if you could only ditch them. This is one of the most crucial steps, since our suffering stems from believing our stressful thoughts. At this point, if you realize that letting go of your usual thinking patterns could indeed make you feel better, you need to try out the opposite point of view, just to see where it takes you. Try making the following five promises to yourself:
1. I need to stop being critical of myself, loathing parts of me that I don’t like
2. I need to have more positive thoughts around what I do like about my looks
3. I need to accept my looks just as they are and stop comparing myself to others
4. I need to quit blaming everything on my looks and using them as a scapegoat
5. I need to realize that my appearance can’t stop me from having fun, unless I allow it
How you look on the outside doesn’t need to determine how you feel on the inside. Yet, too many individuals allow their looks to make them feel unhappy, even people whose looks everyone else may envy. The truth is that nobody cares about your appearance as much as you do, so it’s important to interrupt those negative thoughts before they bring you down.
Once you acquire new ways of thinking, you’ll need to synchronize them with new behavioural patterns by breaking the old rituals that kept you trapped in obsessing over your looks. For example, if you tend to weigh yourself a lot, promise yourself that you won’t do it more than once a week; or, if you spend an hour a day grooming yourself, cut back to 45 minutes a day, 30 minutes on weekends. You’ll notice that people won’t treat you any differently than before. If anything, once you start to feel better about yourself, others will follow suit. As Sophia Loren said, “Sex appeal is 50 per cent what you got and 50 per cent what they think you got!”
Finally, you’ll need to become your own best friend. Have that pep talk with yourself that you would with your BFF if you found her trapped in brutal, self-critical thinking. Then write a letter of apology to yourself, acknowledging all the ways you’ve been mean to yourself, and agree to stand up to anyone who tries to make you feel bad. Chances are, no one can ever be as mean to you as you’ve been to yourself. Before you know it, the anxiety that you felt around your body image will be replaced by self-esteem. After all, it’s called self-esteem since it’s based in how you see yourself – nothing else – which is completely under your own control!
