Finding Your Own Beauty and Confidence
Valuing your own beauty and becoming truly confident is a process of rewriting old stories and working on creating a life that feels beautiful to you. Physical beauty is just a small part of what you actually want, which is to see and be seen for your individual value and your gifts.
Get Real
We project so much onto our bodies. We project our desire to feel loved onto our bodies. We project how we want to feel onto an image of how we want to look. When we are having a good day, we either feel good about our bodies or don’t really think about them much in the first place. When we are having a bad day, we project that feeling onto our bodies. Instead of seeing that negative energy for what it is, it manifests as physical flaws. Before I knew what cellulite was, I saw it as a sign that I was becoming a woman and nothing more. I didn’t think it was a “thing” because everyone seemed to have it. I used to feel insecure without wearing makeup, but ever since social distancing and spending more time at home, I’m confident without it. Our perception of physical flaws is a fluid result of projection and conditioning, not an objective truth. This means you can rewrite them.
Imagine two people taking a walk through nature. One of them points out the canopy of trees, while the other admires the monarch butterflies. Are they saying that the other is not beautiful? Of course not. Trees and butterflies are so different that it wouldn’t even make sense to compare them.
Practice seeing beauty in the world and you will realize that you have such a unique idea of what it is that you will no longer take it personally when other people don’t see your beauty in the way you want them to. The thought of letting this upset you will seem silly, because it is. You can’t see yourself for who you are or be confident if you’re comparing yourself to others or if you’re comparing your beauty to their own idea of what is beautiful.
While we all have our own unique beauty and it’s natural to want to be seen for it, confidence isn’t about how you look. Confidence comes from being firm about what you allow into your life. It comes from knowing what works for you and what doesn’t, and from knowing exactly what you want and making steps every single day to get it. It comes from waking up in the morning excited for a new day to grow and impress yourself. Confidence comes from seeing your value and knowing there’s a path for you and anything outside of that is just a distraction. It comes from knowing that losses protect you from paths that won’t work out and that there will always be better for you in the future.
Create a Life That’s Beautiful
Do activities in the morning that make you feel present and whole. I love to brew lavender coffee, practice deep breathing techniques, and walk around my neighborhood while listening to podcasts. I experience days that flow better when I journal. Assess where you’re at by asking yourself questions and writing down the first thing that comes to your mind. Research journaling prompts and try it out. It’s possible that you struggle with self-love because you haven’t spent enough time with the truth of your being, which often comes out in unexpected ways.
Exercise and stretch on a regular basis to stay strong and keep your energy flowing. Save your money. Clean your living space. Limit your screen time. Get enough sleep. Be honest. Set goals for yourself and work towards achieving the life that you want to be living. If you do all of these things, your conscience will be clean and you will feel free to reward yourself. I firmly believe that if you want self-respect, you have to do respectable things. Focus on your own actions that are in the realm of your control—anything else is just a reflection or a temporary fix.
Smile at strangers. See their beauty because it will help you to see your own. Meet new people and learn something from them. In return, bring your unique knowledge into conversations and you’ll see how much you have to contribute. Learn something new almost every day. Following your interests and passions often leads to finding true friendship.
Stand in Your Power
While the way you feel about yourself is your responsibility, it is highly probable that you have been or will be encouraged to settle for less than what you deserve and talked out of your power at some point in your life, especially if you exist as a woman in this world.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Let people know when they are being offensive (by stating the truth of how you feel, not by creating a scene), let your partner(s) know specifically what you want and need, and DO NOT water yourself down. Especially not to be loved, because that’s not love. That’s you wanting permission to stand in your power and using the way other people feel about you as evidence of it. What you really want is to experience your power for yourself.
People are often separated from their power by the idea that worth is tied to physical appearance. Do you really want “that body” because you think it looks good, or because you have been told so many times that it does? Do you think that looking that way would be empowering for you, or have you been programmed by thousands of posts praising the same body type and ads that use it to sell everything from toothpaste to chicken wings? Do you think people will treat you better if you look like that? I promise you that they won’t. People will only treat you better when you respect yourself so much that you do not put up with anything less than that same respect from others.
Be honest with yourself about the times you have put up with being disrespected or have disrespected yourself with a negative inner dialogue. Growth hurts because you feel a new awareness and guilt for what you’ve allowed in the past when you didn’t know better—or especially if you did know better. Decide to forgive yourself and find peace in knowing that you’re going to do better now. You can rewrite the narrative. You can speak to yourself in a nurturing way, regardless of the behavior of others. It all starts with you.
Now is the time to reclaim your power and see that your individuality plays an important role in the world. Think about cultures that celebrate Goddesses—what would be the point if they were all the same? Research Goddesses and pick one you feel like you most align with. This process will confirm to you that there are many types of beauty that are so different that it makes absolutely no sense to compare them. It will help you to see the most powerful parts of yourself that you can spend more time on developing.
I appreciated myself on a whole other level and reclaimed parts of myself when I channeled my inner Kali. Kali is a warrior who brings about positive transformation by ending what no longer serves. She’s fiercely committed to the truth. Though she is loving, she shows her love by severing off harmful attachments that prevent people from operating from their real power. This is especially useful in 2020 when so many old patterns are dying. Old plans and attachments are falling away, and we must let them.
What will always remain is you.
Kelly Canaday loves to practice chess moves and envision a utopia. Her work has been featured in NPR Interviews, Into The Void, Twist in Time, The Writers’ Cafe Magazine, Poetica Publishing’s Mizmor Anthology, and The Sagebrush Review. She has upcoming publications in Saw Palm and Blood Orange.
This article was edited by EIC Kailah Figueroa