Time is the most valuable currency on the planet, where are you spending your 1,440 minutes every day? Do you allocate 4 minutes to standing in front of a mirror, or maybe it is 40? How many minutes per day do you invest in thoughts about the state of your body? Are your thoughts negative or positive, critical or loving?
CNN published a great article yesterday by author Mina Samuels called Say Bye-Bye to Bad Body Image Talk.
Samuels is right on in her words:
“When someone tells us we look slim, we feel good … for a nanosecond, until it settles in that someone is noticing how we look, and then we start to worry about whether we’ll measure up the next time. Because we know, we know, we know, that we’re doing the very same thing right back at other women. In the end, that bad fairy critic is really just our own insecurities, projected on others, isn’t it? A vicious cycle, that goes round and round and round.
In a room of 50 women the other day, I conducted a quick straw poll. “How many women here feel good about their bodies?” I asked. Only two hands went up, and they were wobbly and tentative at that. That’s 4% of the women in the room. In an independent study, only 12% of women thought they looked good in a swimsuit. I guess that’s three times better than my poll, but come on, both of those numbers are ridiculously low.”
Moreover, how many of those women that didn’t raise their hands were actually happy with how they feel in their bodies but are too self-conscious to admit it, out of fear that the other women would immediately judge and criticize?
The truth is, our bodies will never measure up to the standards of perfection that we have set for them. Do not fool yourself to believe that you will finally love and accept yourself “as soon as” you lose those last five pounds, for body dissatisfaction is a self-perpetuating cycle. Your body will never be “perfect”, so stop striving for it to be and start loving it as it is today. We must stop measuring the value of our days and value of our lives based upon how our body measures up in the mirror and in others’ opinions. The key to breaking free of this vicious cycle of measuring up is to start measuring your life with a different measuring tape. Measure you life in love, and you will start feeling freedom from the mirror and from the constant negative body-talk that permeates our society. Measuring life in love will never lead you astray.