‘We are all unique and perfect’ or ‘You are beautiful, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise’ are common phrases we hear day-in, day-out, mostly across social media platforms to help promote ‘self-love’. I am not going to denounce the self-love (sometimes referred to as self-care) movement that’s happening in our society at the moment, but I am going to leave it aside for just a minute.
Self-love is all about trying to promote people’s positive perceptions of their body and all that it entails. It requires spending time alone with yourself and reflecting on the different aspects of YOU that you love already, but also the parts of you which you might not love as much just yet. This can be challenging, I’ve tried it myself, and there’s no doubt that it is hard.
The benefits are next-to-none but the process can be rough and can dredge up mixed emotions that many people do not want to bear witness to at all. I understand that the idea is to recognise the negative perception’s one has of themselves and do their best to counteract those damaging impressions, but does negativity have to come into it at all?
I am proposing that everybody do their utmost to TRUST their bodies more- after all, it’s gotten you this far, and despite what you might think, you’re doing just fine. It’s about realising that your body is the only vessel you will ever have to fulfil all the dreams, however big or small, you have for the future and believing in your body’s ability to get you there.
People often have this idea that their bodies ‘hate’ them, I am guilty of it, we all are. When you’re sick, you state that your body hates you, that it doesn’t want you to finish that college-work as well as you thought you might have if you weren’t ill. Yet in reality, your body is telling you that there’s something not quite right, that you need help, that it needs to relax and recover for it to work at its full potential again, not going through each day doing everything at 50%.
We need to learn to listen to our bodies and trust it. It is us, we are one with our bodies. Every person has a hint of stubbornness about themselves, they always like to think that their ideas, plans and opinions are ‘the right ones’. Why don’t we project that same stubborn nature toward our trust in our bodies? Our trust that it will forever work with us to get us to where our minds want to go?
It may not be blatantly obvious every day, but your body loves you. Please start to love and trust it back in the way that it deserves.
“A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet”
Nathaniel Branden