She said:
"....my mother would say to me, 'You can't eat beauty. It doesn't feed you.' And these words plagued and bothered me; I didn't really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be. And what my mother meant when she said you can't eat beauty was that you can't rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. And so I hope my presence on your screens and in the magazines may lead you...on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty."
I can remember when I couldn't look into the mirror at my own reflection...I just didn't like what I saw. I didn't think I was beautiful, pretty, attractive...none of those descriptive words resonated with me in any way. These feelings led me to make decisions that did nothing to uplift my thoughts or encourage any type of self-love.
It has taken many years and many changes in my life to get to a place where I can say that I am falling back in love with myself....just the way I am. So often we will say, I'll love myself when I lose this weight, when I get this man/woman, or when I get this job. But what about loving ourselves now...right here in the middle of all our imperfections. Can we do that?
Trust me, I know its a tall order. I didn't reach this space overnight, it has taken me a little over a decade to be able to genuinely say that I truly love and accept myself just as I am. Once I started focusing on my positive qualities, my strengths, and abilities, I started letting go of my harsh self-criticism, comparing myself to others and self-hatred.
Here are some steps I took to get back to loving me:
1. Be Kind to yourself, or my favorite Be Good to Yourself (BGTY) - Accept yourself shortcoming and all. And be aware of how you treat yourself, you are IMPORTANT!
2. Give yourself a break- No one is perfect! Don't set such high standards for yourself emotionally and mentally. Its normal to feel sadness and to hit some low points in life.
3. Embrace yourself - Are you content being alone by yourself without feelings of anxiety, fear and judgment? Learn to embrace the solitude and get comfortable in your own skin.
4. Be Grateful - I cannot stress this enough! When you are grateful for the things that you have, no matter how small they may be, you will see those things increase. Whenever I am about to start my own personal pity party I look at all I have and how far I've made it...that always brings me back to being grateful.
5. Give yourself in service to others - The love you share with others in the form of service will help you feel more love and fulfillment in your life.
The process of loving yourself starts with understanding your true nature. It took a combination of meditation, therapy, writing and silence for me to come to terms with my past and my present. Only once I realized I wasn't loving myself could I attempt to change that.
Falling in love with yourself is a beautiful experience. It's learning to laugh at your awkward tendencies and smile at all your quirky little habits. It's learning to be grateful for the many sides you have -- confident, crazy, shy, sexy, nerdy, angry, weird, and all the rest of them. It is realizing that you're one of a kind - there's only one YOU - and that you deserve to give the world the best person you can be. Falling in love with yourself is being happy in your life and knowing that in this one moment in time, you're beautiful simply because you are you.
"Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." ~ Rumi
