Finding the Strength to Love Your Reflection – No Matter What

Finding the strength within your own mind, your own psyche, to Love Your Reflection can be easy when you are not faced with an imagined or real nemesis…being consistent and doing it in circumstances where you do not feel strong or confident is tougher, but it’s at those times that you must continue to exercise patience with yourself and continue to use your positive affirmations.

I’m with my family at an annual pilot’s event in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The event is full of good people, great times, fun, work, activity and great weather (so far). It’s all the things that make a summer getaway fun…except that it’s also hard to hide here. The last time I was at this event, I was just beginning my weight loss journey and wasn’t seeing really dramatic results just yet. I kept comparing myself to others present at the event, especially those who were thinner tha
I was or seemed to be in better shape.

There were several women there who were very confident and accepting of themselves – they were not the thinnest or the fittest women in the group, but they were COMFORTABLE with themselves. What a luxury, I thought at the time…to be so confident about who you are and what you look like that you are not intimidated or set aback by anyone else feeling the same way.

In my younger days, I not only noticed people with this kind of inner and outer confidence, I envied them – in some ways, I guess I still do. Even when their bodies are not perfect, when they have the special little idiosyncrasies that make us all human, they still showed the world that they loved themselves. Why couldn’t I find that for myself? It had to begin with a paradigm shift in how I looked at other women.

I saw them as competition of a sort – and this goes back to my childhood, when I was not “pretty enough” or “thin enough” or whatever enough to catch the eyes of the boys I was interested in at the time. Whenever I happened to get into a spoken or unspoken competition for a guy with another girl, I always lost. I tried to tell myself it was because the boys were shallow (though they were) and only interested in “typical” cute (which meant thinner than me and curvier than me), the fact remained that every time I “lost” the competition, my self-esteem dropped a little lower.

Now it’s many years later and I still have a challenge dealing with aggressive women who don’t mind flirting with another woman’s husband. This weekend event I may run into someone who had no problem flirting aggressively with my husband the last time we were here…not my favorite memory of an overall positive set of memories. But this time is different…

I now Love My Reflection much more tha
I did a year ago; I am much stronger than a year ago; I am more confident than a year ago, and I plan on putting that new confidence on show this weekend. Whether this woman appears at the event or not, I am not going to let her presence (and my insecurity about my “competition” with her) ruin my weekend. I will not let my impression of someone else’s level of confidence affect MY level of self-confidence, and I will not let ANYTHING diminish my new acceptance of myself.

I’ve done too much work over the past 18 months (14 months of active weight loss, 4 months maintaining) to fall back into an old, unhealthy thought pattern, which might drive me to eat something that isn’t at all good for me and will only give me a temporary fix of feel-good endorphins. I am stronger than that, and I have found the strength to Love My Reflection – No Matter what or WHO comes into my life.