A Collaborative Message To All Women: What Makes You Feel Beautiful? - #feelbeautiful Challenge #1
I read a post on what makes you #feelbeautiful by @hopehuggs and @eaglespirit about a month ago and was even invited by the lovely @hopehuggs to write my views on the topic. I was a bit occupied with some stuff at that time, but since I loved the idea behind this curriculum, I decided there and then that I would be a part of it. So here are my views on the topic.
I think what makes a woman feel beautiful varies from woman to woman because every woman in this world has her own journey and goes through different instances and experiences that shape her perception and outlook of beauty differently.
As for me, the meaning of beauty has evolved a lot in the past few years. I perceive beauty from two ways: internal and external, and while I think internal beauty is a lot more important than just looking beautiful from the outside, external beauty has quite a role to play in my life too.
As a young girl, I was never told much that I looked beautiful at least not by my relatives or friends. Yes, my mother did tell me I was a beautiful girl and she always made me feel good about myself. However, my aunts and a few other relatives around me kept telling me from time to time that while I had a beautiful heart and was lovely from the inside, I wasn’t as beautiful from the outside as my younger sister. At that point, it di bother me but not to a great extent, but when I analyze my personality over the past years now, I realize that comparison was a huge reason why I nurtured jealousy for my sister and why I was always competing to prove myself to others.
When I entered my teens, I started paying more attention to how I looked but even then, I didn’t care much about what others thought of me. To me looking beautiful at that time meant to look good and keeping my hair open always made me feel beautiful. I have nice silky, straight and shiny hair and since it was one thing I was always complimented on, keeping them open made me feel beautiful. As I grew older, I realized that I needed to lose weight and then began my long struggle with losing weight to feel more beautiful. At that time, I wasn’t as comfortable in my own skin as I am now and felt that to look and feel beautiful, it was mandatory to lose weight. My focus then wasn’t on being healthy, but just to lose weight so then I began my journey that eventually ended when I lost a good amount of weight in college and did attain an attractive figure. When I was in college, I became more conscious about looking more attractive and when I did lose weight, I actually started to feel really good about myself too.
When I did lose weight, I started eating healthier foods too and my eating habits improved for the better. I felt active almost always and my mood improved a lot too. I felt amazing then and it was then that I realized that feeling healthy, light and refreshed makes me feel beautiful. With time, my focus became more on feeling beautiful from the inside because I realized that there was a lot of anger blocked inside me and a lot of emotional issues that I was facing that kept me from feeling beautiful from within. So I started to search for ways to eliminate my emotional blockages and actually feel beautiful from the inside.
While working for a few clients on e-books related to mindfulness, meditation and self-acceptance, I found out the missing elements from my life and then began working on being more aware of myself, less judgmental of the many feelings I experienced as well as the many instances going around me and more accepting of the different things that happened inside of me and on the outside. It took me quite a while to slowly implement these changes, but as I worked on them, started letting go of the many problems that were sabotaging me from the inside. I let go of my need to judge others; I let go of my need to constantly give my viewpoint to others and speak unnecessarily; I let go of my need to prove that I was always right; I let go of my hunger to debate with everyone on everything; and most importantly, I let go of my desire to change others for I realized everyone is different and you cannot change people according to your own needs. When I let go of all these issues, I started feeling peaceful from within and the more I allowed peace to enter my body and mind, the more I felt more beautiful from the inside.
As I started feeling beautiful from the inside, I moved more towards practices such as yoga and meditation and the more I practiced them, the more my skin shone and the better I looked too. I became more compassionate and helpful towards my family members and my bond with them improved and now when someone tells me that I am as beautiful from the inside as I am from the outside, I #feelbeautiful. Also, I clearly remember feeling really beautiful on my wedding day. It was a very special day for me and to this day, I cannot forget how amazing I felt that day. It was beautiful.
Whenever my husband and son tell me how good I look or how nice I am, I feel beautiful. Besides my loved ones telling me I am beautiful, I feel beautiful whenever I do yoga. I feel fresh from within and that feeling makes me feel really happy and I know I look pretty when I feel happy.
The following is a hilarious meme my cousin made for me just to show how ugly (according to him) I looked when I was younger. He is a good friend of mine and we are always pulling each others legs so I enjoyed that.
What are your views on the topic? Even if you are a guy reading this, I would love to hear your views on what makes you feel beautiful. Thank you for reading this and supporting me.
Love and Light,
Sharoon.
If you enjoyed this post, the following may entertain you too.
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@sharoonyasir/my-scar-stories-reminders-of-many-different-memories
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@sharoonyasir/batman-and-jesus-why-do-we-fear-debate
I am a part of the @ecotrain which is a great place to be in if you like reading great content.
First off let me say you are beautiful and your one of those wonderful people whose beauty shines both the external beauty but your inner beauty and the wonderful person you are shines out clearly for us all to see
Aww that is one of the best things anyone ever said to me. Aren't you the nicest <3
Shhhhhh you will ruin my reputation of being a tattooed thug lol 😂
Just the honest truth as I see it
Hahaha you are amazing!
No just plain old me 😎
Can't comment on my inner beauty, it's up to others to decide. For some people, I might have an ugly soul and vice versa. I have always tried not to harm any person with my words or reactions and still trying.
When people like @beingnaveed says You are an amazing person, mera bhai. Tu Allah ki bohat bari atta hey mujh perHe said this when we celebrated his birthday and it was a shocking surprise for him. I really felt proud, don't know why.
I told my mother about you yesterday and showed your wedding picture she said MasAllah ye sab se pyari hey, parri lag rahi hey
And I said ke ander se bhi itni hi pyari hain. To me, maintaining inner beauty is more important than the external one!
Bas ab mein ne ziada tareefein nahi karni aap ki, Ilfaaz khatam ho gaey hey!
Haye you are just so nice. You and Naveed know how to make me happy :D. You are honestly a great guy and what both, Yasir and I like a lot about you is your hunger to be more and better. And aunti is so so sweet year. A big jhappi to her for all the wonderful words.
I think feeling good about ourselves is what makes us feel beautiful - not what we really look like. and letting go of what is other's ideas of beauty. so hard!!
and I need to see your haturday entry lol
I completely agree with what you said and yeah, I am looking for a hat to get started too.
U r beautiful externally and I also feel you are internally
How sweet and kind of you. Thank you :)
People have no idea how their words (or lack of them) can really damage a person's image of themselves. Glad you were able to walk the road of discovery.
People never understand and quite often, the ones here label it as a joke. I am glad I didn't let it take the better of me too. Thanks for stopping by :)
Great post! I especially loved when you started to write about how you started to feel beautiful from the inside when letting go of judgment and criticism... it really does start from within. What a great story, made me smile ;) <3 #youarebeautiful!
Aww thanks a lot. Letting go of judgements makes me smile too and has been one of the biggest improvements in my life. One other thing that has made me smile the past two days are your posts. Been waiting for my voting power to rejuvenate a bit so I can give better upvotes. :)
I really liked this post, I can relate- when I am active and healthy I feel more beautiful! Lovely photos!
Thanks a lot. Yeah feeling and being healthy definitely makes u feel amazing from within.
I appreciate your journey, and it's definitely a great thing to feel that your beauty comes from a deep place inside. However, I wish that we women felt comfortable defining ourselves outside the question of whether we are "beautiful". I know that inner-beauty means the same thing as being good, or kind, or bringing positivity to the world around you...but feel that (for me, at least!) it is liberating to feel that I do not need to be or feel beautiful. I can be good and kind, beauty is optional :) Thank you for sharing!
Your view on feeling beautiful is great and I respect it a lot. I definitely agree with you on that it should be on us whether and how we need to feel and how we achieve that and we should stop letting the society affect us and our perceptions of our own self. It is something difficult to do, but if we keep trying, we can achieve that. Thank you for this meaningful comment- means a lot.
I am so glad you're no longer letting your text go to all-centered after you insert an image. I can do so much more with your articles now that you've fixed that formatting problem!! Thank you so much. This was a big help to me!
Well in all honesty, I don't know how it happened. I tried fixing the text going to centered after inserting an image in a post it happened in about a month ago, but nothing worked or maybe I wasn't trying the right things. This time things worked out for me and I need to analyze and compare things to figure out how I fixed it. Thanks for stopping by :)
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Thank you so much. Your curated posts are always amazing and I am so excited to go through them. Thanks for all the support and for being amazing at what you do. :)