If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in “looking good” right? What if I told you that how you feel determines how you look? Have you ever been around someone who had such positive energy that you just wanted to be around them more? Did you care how they looked? NO! You noticed their energy first, and that was what mattered most. There’s plenty more to cover about why feeling good is infinitely more important than looking good. First off, as we just covered, when you feel good, you look good. Healthy, energetic people have a glow about them. Those making progress in their daily lives are not only happy with themselves, their happy with their life and that shows in everything they do. When you focus on health and truly start to feel better and better, it radiates outward and people notice. In other words, YOU LOOK GOOD!
However, if you try to approach it the other way and focus on all your efforts on improving your looks, there’s a very big chance that you’ll still feel largely unsatisfied when you reach your goal. I’ve seen it happen countless times and it’s always sad when people reach their goal, only to realize that they’re no happier than when they started working towards it.
Self-Acceptance Vs Self-Improvement
There is one proven way to FEEL better WHILE you work on whatever bodily changes you plan to make. Self-acceptance is an art form – loving yourself is ironically not easy. Most of us who have body issues tend to hate the way we look and that’s why we reach for change. But sadly that energy is tainted – if you try to change the way you look because you hate yourself (or your appearance), you are setting yourself up for failure.
Without practicing self-love, once you reach whatever goal you set, you’ll find that you still hate the way you look. In fact, that’s never guaranteed to change after simply changing your appearance in any way! That’s why people get addicted to plastic surgery, crash diets, extreme habits and all other manner of appearance-focused goals. It all comes back to loving and accepting yourself how you are, rather than promising to love yourself once you look a certain way.
When you decide to love yourself from every angle, at every time, in any physical shape, you improve from a place of love where all progress is appreciated and maintained. Thankfully, practicing self-acceptance is very easy and takes nothing but a little time and consistency. Positive self-talk and affirmations can really help, and while we can’t always stop negative thoughts, we can add positive ones afterward that are much more powerful than simple negativity.
How I learned to Love Myself
In my own journey, I used one main method of self-love that helped me to accept my body in its current state, without any planned changes. I simply spoke to myself as a friend, as a lover, as a teammate with a mutual goal. I spoke kindly, from a place of pure love. That took a while, and at first I didn’t actually believe the things I said. I would tell myself how much I loved myself, that I was beautiful and perfectly imperfect, but at first it didn’t do much. Like most things in life, progress came with CONSISTENCY!
After a few weeks and then some months passed by, I was used to thinking positive thoughts and recognizing unhealthy ones. Eventually I was able to replace the unhealthy, negative thoughts and they drastically reduced in frequency. After about 6-9 months, I felt in full control of my “mental voice”, that version of you that speaks to yourself in your head. We were finally friends on the same path instead of vicious enemies taking shots at each other. Accepting myself was when I stopped the unhealthy, appearance-focused habits of crash dieting and chasing unattainable goals. I was finally in love with myself – that is the only way we can maximize the love in this world sustainably! It starts by loving yourself.
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