Loving Ourselves: Looks

I'm sure that lots of us are guilty of NOT loving ourselves enough.

I definitely think that I sometimes forget to look after no.1!

Just this week I was wondering if I should go blonde. I'm not pretty enough. Will nice blonde hair make me look better? I hate wearing my glasses - would blonde hair improve that?

I googled famous people who are naturally dark but have gone blonde for ideas. I am pretty dark and that would obviously be an issue - with the amount of time and money it would take to get to the shade I like, very dark roots to keep up with, etc.

Then I realised that my hair colour is really not the issue. I like my brown hair and it's in very good condition - there is nothing wrong with it just how it is... I was just picking on myself unnecessarily!

Aren't we all guilty of doing that sometimes? I look back at photos from last Christmas and think "crap - why did I wear that jumper? It makes me look bigger than I am..."

I'm embarrassed to admit that one as it makes me sound ridiculous. But I think most of us ladies do it at some point!

So how do we learn to love ourselves instead?

I guess this is all learnt behaviour - looking in the mirror and wishing a few things were different - instead of admiring the things that you like about yourself.

Surely we weren't born with an instinct to slag ourselves off - we must have picked it up somewhere along the line.

It could be because of the endless photos of perfect girls in magazines. With perfect style, lovely clothes, a flawless face and perfect body/hair. Of course this isn't how most of them really look on a day-to-day basis...

Or maybe it was pressure from other girls at school? Being a teenage girl can be tough - some girls are true mean girls, and secondary school can quite frankly leave us comparing ourselves to the over-confident "pretty" girls. Were they really any prettier than us? In most cases, no.

They may have had nicer clothes, but we can buy nicer clothes. They may have had better make up, but we can buy nicer make up. 

I really think that if you're very confident in yourself, others will believe that you are as fabulous as you make out.

Which shows that we should all have a little more confidence in our looks, or our decisions, or our beliefs (or our blogs!!)... and tell ourselves that we are doing very well, instead of wishing we had a different wardrobe to "make us look better".

We should look in the mirror and think about what we like about ourselves. It doesn't mean you have to turn into some loud over-confident person who puts others down...just look after number one. 

For example, my hair looks really nice today, I'm happy with it...

Oops - does that make me sound big-headed? 

We've been taught that it's not good to compliment ourselves. Time to change that right now! 

What's your favourite thing about your looks?

 

Eyes? Hair? Make up? Smile?...

 

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