On Deciding to Be Beautiful: Letters from My Younger Self
Today I changed my life. I changed my life because, for the first time, I am deciding to be beautiful.
I decided. What powerful words. I have often been asked how I accomplished certain things or how I manage certain disciplines that people perceive as being hard or challenging. People ask “how did you do it?” – they want a formula perhaps. But, no, it’s deeper than that. We want to know what it takes to harness the will-power we believe must be required in order to perform this task or accomplish this goal that to us seems so unachievable.
So very often, after a reflective pause, my answer begins with the simple, quiet, humble, yet declarative statement, I decided.
The Value of Deciding
When you decide to do something, I think you’re at least 70% there. There’s something on the inside that shifts when you decide you are going to do something. I believe something dies, and I think that ‘something’ is resistance. It gets tied up and tossed out when we simply decide to do a thing. When we decide, somehow all the chatter shuts down and our resources are suddenly marshalled to focus on something entirely different and new – the HOW.
The question is no longer whether we are going to do something. That debate is over. The negative committee in our head is adjourned and dismissed. Now only positive voices can be heard, offering insight, creativity, and ideas to facilitate the daily tasks necessary to complete the desired result.
The Battlefield of the Mind: Choosing the Voice of Truth
Well, today, I decided something I’ve never decided before. It wasn’t an activity, a goal, or destination. Today I am simply deciding to be beautiful, and I was set free from a lifetime of bondage to the torment and debate about whether or not I am.
If you asked me whether I’m beautiful, I would immediately answer in the affirmative. In part because I know (intellectually at least) that it’s the truth, but more so because I know I must. If you asked me if I believe I’m beautiful, there would be a moment of silence while I try to articulate a feeling that goes more often than it comes, depending on countless variables. When forced, I will admit that I hesitate because deep (or perhaps not that deep) down inside, I don’t believe I’m beautiful at all.
Within my hesitation, there echoes a lifelong internal debate triggered by the loss of my right eye long before I could speak, walk, or perceive my own value. The debate continues between the voice that empowers me with truth about my beauty and the voice that believes a lie and resonates far more with it.
My internal climate has always been tuned to the voice that tells me I’m not beautiful. So it’s easy to connect with feelings and thoughts that resonate with that – after all every internal ecosystem defaults according to its settings.
But because I know the words I contemplate and speak contain the power of both life and death, I intentionally and willingly engage in the struggle to force my thoughts and my spoken words to line up with what I know to be true but have trouble seeing when I look in the mirror sometimes. Yes, it’s a lot of work. But the battlefield truly is the mind, so I know it’s worth the fight. I also know I wouldn’t be where I am had I not signed up for this fight in the first place. Surrender is not an option. So I engage every day, and somedays, it’s a real slug-fest.
The Decision: The Ultimate Tie-Breaker
The big news is that today I decided the debate between the voice of truth and the voice of lies is no longer a worthy expenditure of my time or effort when it came to my beauty (at the very least). Today, I shut the debate down by simply deciding TO BE beautiful. Is there a difference? If I already know I’m beautiful (at least intellectually), what sense does it make, and what difference does it make to decide to be beautiful?? But for me there’s a chasm between these two things. Somehow for me, thinking you are beautiful and the decision to be beautiful are completely different.
To say of myself, I am beautiful might seem empowering, but it has taken a great deal more energy and work for me to embrace. After all, ‘beautiful’ is just a superficial description. It’s not a state of being. Instead it’s an adjective with which I have to figure out whether or not I can (or am willing to) agree, depending on the day. Whether or not I believe this description, it’s still just an opinion which somehow carries less weight, perhaps because it’s subject to change.
But to be beautiful is my decision – it’s a choice to take on a state of being. I seize it and therefore it’s mine, it’s my entitlement, it’s my right. It’s something I can own, instead of having it be some elusive thing that escapes me or that belongs to people who meet certain criteria that I might not. It is literally something I can choose for myself.
I can identify myself with it and own as mine. Because being beautiful is something I have chosen and decided to be, it’s no longer something that might evaporate while I’m asleep, leaving me abandoned to fend for myself in the morning. I don’t have to figure out what I have to do in order to be beautiful. I don’t have to be a certain way, dress a certain way, style my hair a certain way or even wear any make up at all. None of these things matter in the face of something I have chosen simply to be. There can be nothing more empowering than that.
