Open Mind Hypnotherapy
This is a rather lovely short film (only 8 minutes of your time) where a group of women discuss their thoughts and feelings about how they look.
While I was watching this video, my middle daughter sidled up to me and watched too, drawn in by the ‘Tinkerbell’ music (her words!) and the unfamiliar voices. She joined me just as the poem was being read towards the end of the film. Her comment? “Mummy, that lady has very big earrings”. Nothing about weight, or skin colour, or any of the things we (as grown up women) have a tendency to worry about. Just an innocent and matter-of-fact observation about what she saw.
It really made me realise that actually, the vast majority of the time, people don’t focus on all that stuff that we worry about. People just see us exactly as we are. We are the ones who label ourselves with all these negative descriptions (perhaps because we listen too closely to other people’s self-derogatory comments, or pay too much attention to what we see on social media, in magazines or on TV) and then we choose to live according to them.
And it is a choice.
Because when you choose to label yourself as something different – as being beautiful, or funny, or intelligent, or kind, or “ok just as I am” (something that is coming up a lot with my clients at the moment) – your unconscious eventually shifts to keep up with this new way of thinking. Gradually that new way of thinking becomes a new way of feeling, and that new way of feeling (over time) becomes a new way of being.
The film asks: “When do YOU feel most beautiful?”
I pondered this question for a while. When do I feel most beautiful?
Eventually I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t really a definitive answer.
Sometimes it’s when I’m dressed up to go out for a date with my partner – knowing that I’ve made an effort makes me feel more confident, and when I feel confident in who I am and what I look like, I feel beautiful.
Sometimes it’s when I’m surrounded by my Questie friends – being enveloped in such a supportive, accepting and positive environment makes me feel beautiful.
Sometimes it’s when I’m behind my camera, capturing a ‘moment’ – being permitted to witness someone else’s deeply personal emotions, even for just a second, makes me feel beautiful.
Sometimes it’s when I’m out for a walk on my own – reconnecting with myself and the world around me makes me feel beautiful.
Sometimes it’s when I’m curled up on the sofa in old jeans, a jumper and fluffy socks, reading stories to my girls – being with my daughters, each so beautiful inside and out, makes me feel beautiful because they are part of me.
Reading back over what I’ve just written, and trying to make connections between all those different situations, I guess I feel most beautiful when I’m being 100% me. Not trying to please other people, not trying to be perfect.
Just being me.
I’d love to hear your answers to the question: When do you feel most beautiful?
Feel free to leave them as a comment below or get in touch via email (chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk)
Phone: +44 (0) 7794 595783
Email: chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk
We don’t use the word fat in this house but my 5 year old daughter goes to school and has started using it. The other day we were out for lunch and there was a little girl across the table from us that looked a similar age to my daughter. She was quite large for her age but we all know that sometimes we grow out and sometimes we grow up and sometimes we grow bumps in different places! So I was shocked when my daughter said to me “Mummy that little girl over there is really fat”
I looked at my daughter and said “You never say things like that about people. You never describe them by something about the way they look unless you need to pick them out from a crowd”
Hearing the worried tone in my voice she said “What does fat mean mummy?”
And I realised that as is so often the case, she was just copying what she heard others say.
So my reply was this
“Fat means different things to different people. Really it just means a thing that meat has on it to protect it but to people it means different things. To some it is rude…it is saying something horrible to them that makes them feel bad, to some it makes them feel like they are different, to other it means nothing. But you can never know what it means to a person and you wouldn’t want to make someone feel bad would you? You wouldn’t want to upset them on purpose?”
She nodded her head no with a serious look on her face. My daughter knows I help people and we both try and make people happy not sad.
I continued “So because we don’t know what it means, the best thing to do is not to use that word just in case ok?”
She agreed and headed off into the softplay not realising the significance of the moment we just had.
In reality it is one of thousands of moments I will share with her where I am helping her to understand that we don’t judge people. We don’t measure them by how they look and who we are is unique and special. The footprint we should leave on this world should be about helping people feel that they are ok no matter what.
(sorry for the long waffly comment!)