I have to admit I spend too much time scrolling on social media. Not that it is totally disruptive to my life, but I still do it too much. I do love cute animal pictures and videos, I get inspired by what many people are doing, and there are definitely some positive posts. I think the thing that most disturbs me is the amount of people who feel they need to filter and enhance themselves to look a certain way. My belief is that we are all beautiful, just as we are, and there is no filter needed.
For so many years of my life, my appearance was the most important thing. Don’t get me wrong, it is still important, but now it doesn’t define me. These days I want to look good because I already feel good about me, not because I want to feel good about me. In another time, my self-worth cup was not as full as it should have been, in fact almost empty. In other words, I didn’t like or value myself much. That being the case, I believed that if I achieved certain things and looked a certain way it would fill that cup and magically I would feel better about myself. It didn’t, and I didn’t.
I would train obsessively to have a physique that would be admired. I would eat with total paranoia that if I put any ‘bad’ food in my body, it would immediately show. I made sure if any pictures were taken, my hair looked good, the filters were applied, and I appeared flawless. Yes, it was exhausting and stressful. It wasn’t until, after hitting rock bottom, I finally decided things needed to change, that I started the long journey to self-love, and accepting myself as I was, flaws and all. These days when I have pictures taken, there are no filters needed. I accept and love my wrinkles and flaws because they contribute to my individuality.
My question to you is this. Are you applying filters and enhancements to your photos? The even more important question is, why? If you are doing it because you don’t like how you look, want to look younger, or want to portray and image of flawlessness. Again, I would ask, why? For whose benefit? Who do you feel you need to impress? As a single man, I have been on and off dating sites. I am not sure what the experience is like for women, however, I find many women use filters and enhancers on their profile pictures. That may be fine for an image they want to portray, but my question is, how does it go when they actually meet a man in person and have to present themselves as they are, without the filters?
I have met women who look totally different to their pictures. It gets me wondering about their feelings of self-acceptance and self-worth. I am sure many men do the same thing, as I did. The bottom-line is this, if we don’t love ourselves, flaws and all, wrinkles and all, then it is going to be very difficult to find someone else to love us. I know that to be trute and have three divorces to prove it. So, how do we build ourselves to the point where we love ourselves just as we are, and where filters are no longer needed? This is the key question.
All I can do is talk about it from my perspective, and let you know what I did. Hopefully, it can help you. For me, the greatest healing and revelation came from my faith. I now believe God created me for a reason, and my worth is not based on what I do or how I look, but that I am here. This changed many things, and the helped me to start accepting myself for who I was, flaws and all. The more I started to understand myself, my conditioning, where my beliefs came from, and why I behaved the way I did, the more I was able to accept, forgive, and start to love myself.
Interestingly, as this process was evolving, I was becoming less critical of how I looked, and more accepting of who I am, wrinkles, flaws and all. I am now at a stage, where I am happy to be me, and happy to share pictures of me with no filters needed. I hope you can get to the same place and love yourself for who you are right now. This doesn’t mean we stop aspiring to be better, it just means we are aspiring for the right reasons; not to feel worthy, because we already are.
I published two amazing podcasts this week. Life is short, with Lindsay Johnson, and A healthy shift, with Roger Sutherland. Both focus very heavily on self-worth, and dealing with the inner struggles, to help make the outer world a more joyful place. I hope you believe deep in your heart that you are beautiful just as you are. I hope you will stop hiding behind filters and be authentically you, because that is what the world wants and needs. Trust me when I say; there is no filter needed.