Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
How many times a day or week would you look at someone and think “OMG! They are perfect! I wish I could look like them!!”? Probably more than once, right? I know I have done it.
But what is perfection? Who defines what a “perfect” person looks like?
Being a Women’s Health advocate and a Personal Trainer who works closely with women and young girls everyday, I can tell you that it’s definitely more than once a day that I hear someone say something they dislike about themselves or wish they had something that the girl across the room had. But why? Why as women are we NEVER happy with the way we look? We are never pretty enough, never smart enough, cool enough, worthy enough or never skinny enough! But for who or what? Why are we as humans always so quick to judge each other? We should be accepting of each and every person, no matter how someone looks.
We spend hours scrolling through social media looking at photos of other women across the world, only to bring ourselves down by wishing we were doing what they were doing or wearing the clothes they are wearing or hanging out with the people they are hanging out with. This doesn’t make us happy! Doing this, if anything only makes us more self-conscious and brings a negative vibe to our thought process. It leaves us wishing and wanting more, rather than being truly happy with what we have and how we look!
What about instead of every time we looked in the mirror we complemented and told ourselves how proud we were instead of looking at what we think are flaws and thinking negative thoughts. There is already so much negativity in this world, we don’t need anymore!
As a bikini competitor, people have this false perception that we walk around in competition shape all year round. Let me tell you first hand, we do not!! And if we did, we would be a bunch of very sick women whose hormones would be non-existent! And I don’t mean we go and put on 20kg and eat what we want and stop training, but we ease back. We take time to refuel and rest our body, which gives us a chance to grow before the next time we step on stage. Some girls keep their abs and capped shoulders, some don’t. And that’s ok!! Some people genetically can be lean every day of their life, some have to work hard to be that lean. Every single body is different and built a different way! But for some reason, as soon as someone sees a “fitness model” with a few extra kilos after comp, they automatically judge and think they have let them selves go.
It’s hard. It’s hard living in a world where you constantly feel criticised if you don’t look a certain way, trust me I know. Believe it or not, I also feel the pressure of this. But, the sooner we become more accepting of each other, the sooner a lot more women would have more self confidence and pride to stand up and be who they are. Yes, we all have things we might not be 100% happy with, but if its wanting to loose weight, put on weight, gain muscle, have abs, eat healthier, train more or even just smile more, these are all things that you can wake up everyday and work hard towards achieving!! While you are going through this process, be proud of yourself. Notice the little goals you are achieving, the accomplishments you are making and remember that someone out there could be looking at YOU thinking “OMG! She is perfect!” even though you might not see it.
If just for one day we could see ourselves through someone else’s eyes maybe we would see just how “perfect” WE already are. Next time you start to think something negative about yourself, I want you to STOP and change the negative to a positive! You will soon realise how happy you can actually be just by being YOU and not wanting to be the girl on social media.
You are beautiful, embrace it & love yourself!
Han xoxox