Beauty is Not in the Eye of the Beholder
By: Lisa M. Hayes – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
YOU GET TO DECIDE HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE.
I recently got a new client, we’ll call her Amy. She has given me permission to share some of her experience here. When I got my first email from her inquiring about coaching she talked about how hard it had been for her to get out there in the world, to date or anything else, since her car accident. She’d suffered extensive scarring to her face.
Amy felt like she’d never been a pretty woman, but after the accident, she was so ashamed of the way she looked that she was frozen. She knew her appearance was a big deal because people acted like they just didn’t even see her. Amy felt invisible, and frankly, she liked it that way.
Fast forward a week to our first session. Amy shows up on Skype and I wondered if I’d gotten my client wires crossed. Where was the scarred car accident victim? The woman in front of me was stunning, and not in a disfigured and scarred kind of way, but in a supermodel way.
Amy is 5’8”. Toned and fit at 135 pounds. Gorgeous, flowing, long blond hair, and blue eyes the color of a summer sky. I felt awkward for the first ten minutes of our video chat because I was distracted, studying her makeup bare face, trying to find the scar. Finally, I had to ask where it was and tears rolled down her cheeks as she turned her head to the left, pulled her beautiful spiraling curls back, and there at the edge of her hairline, was a barely perceptible red line where stitches had once been.
Now one might think this is a beauty-obsessed woman, being ridiculous about a scar. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Amy never, ever saw herself as beautiful and to be honest, it wasn’t long before her drawn, shame-filled, self-persecuting energy started to affect the way I was seeing her too.
Being gorgeous for a split second to be photo ready in the commercial world, is a very different thing than being the kind of beautiful that weaves in and out of the moments of our days and lives. That kind of beauty has everything to do with how we perceive ourselves, not how others perceive us, because it truly is an inside job. I have coached more than one professional model that had serious self-esteem issues.
We’ve all seen it, going both ways. We’ve all met women who were pretty for a while, but our perception of them changed because they were flowing an energy that wasn’t genuinely attractive. Additionally, we’ve all met the woman who had the attention of everyone around her, in a very positive way, that didn’t meet the standards of “traditional beauty”, but had that little somethin’ somethin’ that turned heads.
How I carry myself and show up in the world is my choice. I can be my own best friend or my own worst critic. How I see myself is the largest determining factor to how others will see me. Beauty is NOT in the eye of the beholder. I get to decide how beautiful I am. Not anyone else. From one beautiful woman to another my challenge to you is this, get out there being your most radiant self. Show off what nature gave you. Be bold and share your beauty.
More by Lisa:
Why Sex is So Important in Relationships and Four Ways to Turn Up the Heat
Lisa is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the newly released hit book, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.
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