we all have our little somethings...
Alex Beauchamp (who founded another.girlatplay) wrote a great post recently about how we all get impressions of ourselves stuck in our heads somewhere along the line, and how we then continue to limit ourselves in our lives because of them.I love this post, because over the last year I have had a few enlightening encounters with some friends of mine, around this topic. One of the first ones was probably almost exactly a year or so ago now, and I was picking up a friend to go out for the night.
When she opened the door I saw she was wearing a skirt and I commented to her how cute she looked! Saying, "You have such great legs! You should wear skirts more often!" And she replied, "No way - I have such skinny bird legs, that's why I don't wear skirts more often!"
I was blown away by this - because all I could think about was, "Wow, if I had legs like yours - I'd wear skirts all the time!"
Then it came up a few months later with a coworker, who while we were walking together she said something about her elbows looking gross. And I was like WHAT?! And she said how when she was young, somebody told her she had ugly elbows - and ever since she's been super self-concious of them... She was sure that anyone who saw them, thought they were ugly. (And I'm here to tell you, her elbows were perfectly normal!) But once again - so funny (and very sad, of course) that this got stuck in her head to this day!
Chatting about all this with another friend, she mentioned how a friend of hers was so self-concious about her ears that she NEVER put her hair up because of it. Can you imagine? Never ever putting your hair up in a pony tail or anything all because you were self-concious about your ears? I mean, I know it's possible - and it's certainly a valid thing to be self-concious about, but I just can't help but think - at some point you've got to STOP worrying about what others think and let yourself LIVE!!!!!
We've all got our little things we think about ourselves here and there, but the fact is you are who you are... so just let yourself be and accept it - and so will everyone else. (And if they don't - well they can buzz off!)
