Body Image, It's What's on the Inside That Counts

Outer beauty attracts, but inner beauty captivates.

- Kate Angell

Any critical ideas you have about your body and physical appearance do not belong to you. The way you criticize your body, and examine and judge, each area with distaste did not crop up from your inner spirit.

This is a cultural demon that women and men struggle with every single day of their lives by the images that they see repeatedly through all sorts of media. This cultural poison will grow and waste so much precious time if you let it take over.

You are bombarded by these false images in all the television shows you immerse yourself in. You fall in love with these characters, but what you don't realize is they teach you to hate your body, your face, your personality. They try to make you believe that what you see on the screen is perfection. Behind the scene, you don't see the make up, wardrobe, writers, editors, and for many of them, their own self destructive thoughts about themselves.. Or their mental stress of not being someone else's idea of perfect.

If you let your guard down, and don't question your beliefs about your body, you will find yourself a slave to these thoughts and criticisms. They will take up so much of your power and energy that could be used for good. They will infiltrate your relationships. They will force you to compare yourself to others, and create judgement and hate where it doesn't need to exist. Your self love as well as your love of others will fall prey to this mindset.

When our minds are absorbed daily in examining, questioning and criticizing our physical appearance, that energy leaves little time for the creation of love. Of giving, of really being there for others. Vanity is a sad, but prevalent state of affairs in our culture. And the media reinforces that energy every moment. You have to be wide awake when you immerse yourself in that energy. Notice how it makes you feel about yourself and your own life. If it's not feeding a positive vibration, then it's feeding something else and it's your job to be ever vigilant about what you swallow not only through your mouth, but also through your eyes.

The important questions are not "am I pretty enough; am I skinny enough; are my boobs big/small enough; am I tall/short enough. The questions should be " am I healthy, am I strong; am I kind; am I generous". When our culture makes those attributes attractive and desirable, we will have won ourselves back from the beast that is the media. And that all begins with you. And me. We must claim our minds back from the machine that has been plugging away at our sense of self for generations. If we don't stand up and notice how our thoughts are influenced and damaged by the perceptions fed to us, we will continue to waste our most precious commodity of life... Time. Time to make a difference. Time to do something that matters. Something that will transform lives and impact our world.

Think about it. Who gets to decide what size pants validate your body as beautiful and miraculous; or make you valuable enough; and whoever is deciding that, why is anyone listening? We decide by what we agree to believe. You get to be in charge of your mind, but only if you decide to. And if you don’t decide to and instead listen to the messages you hear, then you will not be in charge at all. You will have given control to an entity that only cares about money. You hating your body is all about money... about the books you will buy; the medicines you will take; the doctors you will go to to operate on you; the clothes you will buy to prove to someone that you are valuable.

Remember always, that beauty, true beauty is not an outside job. It's an inside job. It's who you are; it's how you treat others, it's how you show graciousness to strangers, it's how you accept others for who they are, it's absolutely how your light shines out into the world. I promise you that it is not the size of your jeans; the size of your butt; or the perfection of your make up.