Today is a letter to myself and to anyone out there who suffers with fluctuating body confidence and low self love, today this will teach you how to let it go, and to enjoy your looks and body in it’s prime and get on with more important matters.
Don’t fight the waves and learn to float down stream.
Learning To Love Your Beauty
Written by Stephi LaReine
At one time or another we’ve been in a fight with our body, and strive for it to be like another. Instagram is a terrible source for this, as it’s a platform for inspiring but a lot of people I’ve spoken to find it a torturing experience to scroll past photos that don’t reflect their own lives.
My advice for getting past the insta-jealousy is to support and love that persons beauty, and tell yourself what beauty you have, or remind yourself of something that someone complimented you on, whether thats your thoughts, intelligence, your outfit, or abilities – anything at all. Direct comparisons are very unhealthy for your mind, when you should embrace your own body and mind.
Throughout my time of intense anxiety I was told to ground myself through a series of breathing techniques that helped me cope with daily anxious thoughts which were mostly induced due to my thoughts on my appearance. It made me feel down in the dumps everyday as I was always surrounded by beautiful people and never felt like I belonged, until I learnt that beauty isn’t always about appearance, it’s about your confidence and pride that you hold within yourself.
We aren’t all born to wake up in the morning looking like Margot Robbie after all. But if we ooze confidence and self love we naturally form an aura of beauty of a approachable positive person. With self love we don’t get stuck into thinking about how other people see our flaws. If we ooze everything that makes us human, to laugh and smile when we’re happy, and cry when we want to cry, we’re no longer occupied on our appearance, we’re engaging in our emotions and expressions, as our bodies are just shells that carry us through our experiences, and it’s what we do with our minds thats the most important thing.
If I could have shown my former unconfident self that I’d be posting a photo to the world of me riding a flamingo feeling the best I ever have in a gorgeous bikini, I think my former self would have bucked up her spirits and learnt to hustle on at an earlier age!
The real trick to learning to love your beauty is just a slight change of mind, that once you love yourself it doesn’t matter what others think, so snap out of the opinion of others. Go find a photo of yourself where you’ve been truly happy, no matter what you look like in the photo, remember that memory and try to recapture what that felt like, if you can bottle that emotion up and take it with you everywhere you’d feel beautiful and glowing all the time.
These are my photos that made me feel truly happy and free, so go find yours!
You’re a beautiful snowflake, unique and individual with a mind full of positive thoughts so make your life and everything in it one big positive thought.
