BEAUTY IS WHAT YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF NOT WHAT YOU SEE IN THE MIRROR !!!!

We all have heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” or “Beauty is only skin deep”.  It’s always emphasised that we shouldn’t assign too much weight to outward appearance but both in experiments as well as real life, physical appearance is very important to us.

Remember??? the beautiful girls and handsome guys of your college, workplace, neighborhood etc. We all love to look at them, talk about them, wonder about them.

One of the reasons we focus on appearance is that we hold stereotypes based on how people look. We tend to believe that attractive men and women are more poised, interesting, sociable, independent, dominant, exciting, sexy, well adjusted, socially skilled, successful and more masculine (men) and more feminine (women) than unattractive individuals. Well this is even true in most of the cases. One of the reasons for this is, attractive people have spent their lives being liked and treated well by others and are often aware that they are pretty or handsome; it enhances their self esteem and confidence.  

But being beautiful also has a negative side to it. We often perceive beautiful girls as vain and materialistic. Even if the beauty is shy, she would be seen as snobby and arrogant. We also tend to credit their success to their looks not their talents.

Surprisingly, low self esteem is more common in beautiful women than we expect. Some just don’t believe they are attractive. They have a distorted self image and do not believe others who tell them how stunning they are or need a constant reminder of how amazing they are.  They spend a lot on maintaining their looks. They cherish their looks and if they find a winkle, a blemish or a flaw they panic and it takes away all their confidence.

Well, external beauty has no relation to goodness and other qualities. When we meet someone for the first time, we usually react to variety of factors other than looks. We need to stop placing too much importance on something which is just skin deep. A person must be defined by his character, his qualities and not mere looks. If your soul is not beautiful all other things doesn’t matter. Physical beauty is superficial and is not as important as a person’s intellectual, emotional and spiritual qualities. So, be beautiful not just by your looks but deep down to your soul !!!! 

HOW TO NOT LET OTHERS MAKE YOU FEEL BAD

There are times when others behave in a certain way that leave us feeling miserable. These emotions make you feel bad about yourself and others and take away your confidence.

Anger, jealousy and sadness are common natural emotions that we feel. These are completely natural emotional states and sometimes even serve a positive purpose like one that calls for a positive action, having rational expectations or considering pros and cons etc. It is rather how we respond to our emotions that lead to good or bad.

Our emotions and feelings in a way direct us and motivate us to process significant events in our life. They seem completely out of our control especially once they are triggered. Negative emotions are like viruses, they contaminate our normal “happy” thought processing and conditioning our mind to function on detrimental feelings and dominating our lives.

Situations like lack of money, a bad relationship, a rude boss, a hateful mother etc. are faced by most of us and its completely ok to feel bad about these situations. But this not how things go, our thoughts are constantly helping us to interpret the world around us, describing what’s happening, and trying to make sense of it by helping us interpret events, sights, sounds, smells, feelings. Without even realising it, we are interpreting and giving our own meanings to everything happening around us. We might decide that something is pleasant or nasty, good or bad, dangerous or safe. Here is when people create their own misery. We start interpreting the situation and end up feeling miserable about ourself.

We start from ....X ignored my hello... who does he think he is ... he always does this to me...everybody does this to me... everybody hates me..... I m so bad .... I hate myself .... why do I even exist and so on.

This is how we create a vicious chain of negative thoughts about oneself and others. When asked people they say it’s quite common for people to think this way and even completely out of their control and if their “others” were a little more considerate about their feelings or their behaviour could be fixed somehow, they’ll be happy.

But sadly we cannot control others, we might influence them to some extent but never control. The only person we can control is ourselves. As it is said nobody can make you feel bad without your consent, yes it is true...but it takes efforts to do so. Nothing good comes easy.

Our emotions are attached to our thoughts e.g. if you pick pink pencil colour you are bound to write pink and if you want to write blue you will have to change your pencil. This simple logic applies with us too. To feel good about a situation you’ll have to replace negative thought with a positive thought. First of all you’ll need to get hold of your immediate thought and feeling that is evoked by a triggering situation, now replace that thought with an alternate more positive thought and you’ll be left feeling better about a situation immediately.

This is a therapy which psychologists use with their clients, which I am going to write in my next blog i.e. detailed ways to control your emotions.