The picture above is deliberately provocative to show self perception in a woman with an eating disorder. What she sees isn't real - it's a projection in her mind. (And obviously, this woman would need to be receiving intensive counseling from a professional to deal with an eating disorder of this magnitude.)
While most women aren't that extreme, we do tend to spend more time looking at our flaws than our assets. Our eye is drawn to the one blemish or the least favorite parts of our body - the negative is seductive and takes our attention. The unfortunate side effect is that we don't pay attention to what's beautiful on the inside and the outside - there's no room for a positive conversation when we're stuck in a negative sound loop in our heads.
Your simple assignment today is to look in your mirror and choose three things you like about yourself. At least one of the things needs to be an external, physical feature (like your eyes, your legs, even your neck!) and one of the things needs to be a personal attribute (like being loyal, kind, a good friend, a good mother, patient, or energetic.) Write these three things down on a post-it note and put them on your mirror for the next week.
Every time you look in the mirror, read those positive things and think about how you're going to take what's already great about yourself and make it better. For example: if you like your eyes - try a new eye shadow, wear a top that matches your eyes, resolve to make more eye contact. If loyalty is one of your strengths, find a way to show that today.
Work on making your 'inner dialogue' positive and reinforcing so that you feel beautiful and reflect beauty. It's hard, but worth it. Pay attention to the voices in your head. You can also try an experiment: keep a piece of paper with you for an entire day with two columns labeled "positive" and "negative." Each time you have a negative thought about yourself make a 'tick' mark in the negative and do the same for positive thoughts. How many more times did you criticize yourself rather than pay yourself a compliment? If you're like most women, the balance is heavily shifted to the negative. Your job is to try to balance the scale, and then tip the scale so you're seeing your beauty and positive attributes as the focal point.
Lastly, if you can't find anything good about yourself, it indicates a bigger issue at play. Ask others to tell you what they find beautiful about you, write it down, and internalize it. Sometimes our blind spots are so obvious to others and they see wonderful things that we don't see ourselves - so open your eyes to your own beauty, inside and out!
Good luck and let me know how it goes!
Best,
Coni
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