You Are Beautiful: Start Believing It

For a long time, I’ve been struggling with the idea of beauty:

What is beauty?

What makes someone or something beautiful?              

Am I beautiful?

And  after a long time of thinking, these are my conclusions:

• Beauty is not something that can be given a textbook definition. What one person may define as beautiful might not be what someone else does; and that’s OKAY!

• When I see something beautiful, it leaves me breathless. I am unable to describe to people why I think something is beautiful, but in my heart and mind, I know it is.

• Beauty can be found in almost anything: people, places, things, thoughts, actions, ideas, etc

• Stop looking at beauty as just something superficial, but instead look for beauty internally. Once you’ve found it, I can promise you that you will be beautiful on the outside as well.

Now how do you interpret these conclusions?

It’s taken me a while to get to the point at which I am able to say to myself “I am beautiful”. After high school and 1/4 of college, I have realized that other people’s opinions of you: the way you look, the way you act, what you like to do, are completely irrelevant. If you like who you are, that’s all that really matters.

It wasn’t until reading an old classmates blog about her realizations in life that I really began to see how much other people’s opinions affected our perception of ourselves. All around me in college, I see people doing things that they may not otherwise do if it wasn’t because of the societal pressure of our peers. There’s such a dumb cliché that college is supposed to be about drunken nights with your friends and hooking up with guys. Yes, some may find that fun and I’m not judging because we’ve all been there. However, when I wake up on Sunday morning, the last thing I feel is beautiful inside.

To me, internal beauty is a combination of pride, confidence, and self worth. Once you’ve gained those three things you begin to accept that you are a beautiful person, both inside and out. Societal pressures should not shape who you are, who you hang around with, or what you like to do. Once you’ve let other’s opinions of you shape who you are, are you really beautiful? Beauty comes from within, and if you’re not being who you really are, then what are you doing? Stop wasting your time being what everyone else wants you to be and live your life. Once you live your life your way, that is when you truly become beautiful.