How to Love Yourself When You’re Ugly
I did something a couple months ago that I swore I wouldn’t do.
Something I felt I was beyond.
Something, I believed, no ‘self love guru’ would do.
We say we won’t or that we don’t but on some level, one time or another, we end up getting sucked into the rabbit hole of comparison syndrome here on the world wide web.
Whether it’s on our own social media pages seeing friends or mentors succeed in their careers at rates that seemed to sky rocket over night, or who seem to have found the loves of their lives, or people who we see while mind numbingly scrolling Instagram who have the body, the hair, the looks, the life, that suddenly triggers a deep longing inside of us making us feel less than, lacking or simply not good enough.
I didn’t know this was still a trigger for me, I didn’t realize that even after all of the personal growth work I had done that I was still, on some level, vulnerable to this.
But as I was aimlessly scrolling one day it hit me, hard, as I compared myself to people I didn’t even know and suddenly I felt so small. This comparisonitis spun out of control, deeper and deeper I went down the rabbit hole.
Such a dangerous place to be.
I doubted every thing about myself.
I threw away every fucking amazing thing I knew about me and replaced it with doubt, criticism, judgement.. and.. the worst..negative self talk.
The words I Googled while I was down in this dark place were
“how do you love yourself when you’re ugly?”
The sad irony of this above question is that I sit in front of a mirror at my desk every day while I work and I see my reflection, often, and I never ever would look at that woman and call her ugly.
But when I started to compare, to look at what others had or just wish I was or looked differently, I suddenly saw a different side of me.
I chose to feel ugly, I chose to feel not good enough, I chose to feel useless, I chose to feel hopeless.
Fast forward a week later sitting in Church in the back pews, at nighttime, and the pastor is talking and I’m not really listening but my eyes are closed and I am half meditating and wanting to heal this ugliness within me that keeps saying I’m not enough, and in that moment, all I saw was a picture of the Beast.. from Beauty and the Beast.
And I didn’t need any other explanation.
Most of my higher self answers come to me in the form of pictures, I am a visual learner, my higher self is so smart and knows this.
With that, I sat there crying and remembering.
At that moment it was so clear to me what I needed to do.
I had not been unconditionally loving myself.
I was loving my wins, loving what was valuable about me, my growth, my progress, my better choices, my ascent from rock bottom.
I was my own biggest fan in all of those areas.
But, the beast in me, she needed love too and I cut off the supply.
The part of me I thought I left behind.
The parts of me that made really shitty mistakes.
The parts of me that hurt others, especially the people who loved me the most.
The parts of me that hurt myself, repeatedly.
The parts of me that lied.
The parts of me that gave too much and depleted myself.
The parts of me that still judge sometimes.
The parts of me that are still afraid sometimes.
The parts of me that still has her guard up against being loved.
The parts of me that are still so scared to lose anyone I love too soon.
All of these parts of me, all of this duality demanding to be seen. Showing up in pretty Instagram photos reminding me, theres still work to do.
We are certainly not our past, not our mistakes, not our choices.
But if we deny all of these experiences, if we deny the parts of us that aren’t so pretty, aren’t so desirable, aren’t us being our highest selves, then we essentially deny all of us, our entire existence.
I thought about how until the Beast was seen in his fullness, in his darkness and his light, he was not complete therefore he could not accept complete love therefore he could not rise into the best version of himself.
You see Belle was just his mirror, his reflection, his beauty but until that Beauty could fully integrate with the Beast, fullness was incomplete.
And so, in that moment I realized that my self love was not just about loving the wonderful things about me, but the things I once fully rejected as awful and terrible and unacceptable and.. unlovable.
Sure I had done a lot of work in the area of forgiveness, but I had not stepped into full approval and acceptance.
Yes, we are beings of light, but we wouldn’t understand light without darkness, nor would we appreciate it.
We all have this sort of Beast inside of us, that holds our secrets, our darkness, our pain, our missteps.
We take away the power of the negative when we accept ourselves as whole, perfect and complete as we are.
Not in spite of, not because of, not with or without something more or less.
Just, as we are.
As God created us.
As God/Source loves us.
There is no one on this planet just like you, or me and regardless of what we have done, where we have been or where it is our prerogative to go, we are completely worthy, and good enough as is, right here and right now.
Comparing ourselves, or denying any part of us rejects our entire existence and that is a really really hard place to live.
You are the Beauty, it is safe to Love the Beast within. ❤
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www.janineaf.com/mess2success
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