Try, try again.

Whenever I see a little baby, especially a girl, I am always struck by how untouched they are by the rules of this world.  They have no concept of what it means to be self-conscious, to not fit in and to feel too big or too small in comparison with everyone else.  I want to whisper to them, you are perfect exactly the way you are.  Love yourself, always love yourself. 

Of course, no matter how much you say that to someone as a child, it is inevitable they will grow up with some sort of notion that a part of them isn’t good enough and isn’t on pare with the rest of the world. 

I am a strong believer that we are all our own worst critics.  I would be willing to bet almost no one looks at you as harshly as you do yourself.  We notice little, tiny, insignificant things about ourselves and train ourselves to think they are massive and unmistakable and that everyone must be staring.  We have days where our clothes feel terrible on us, our hair looks all wrong, our skin is a mess, our eyebrows – out of control.  But the truth is, when I think about the people I see in my day to day life, I couldn’t tell you what any of them wore yesterday.  Or are wearing today for that matter.  I don’t remember thinking they looked good or bad, if they wore makeup or had bad hair.  And the truth is, no one ever remembers.   People’s memories are not made up of snippets of what everyone looked like – how good or how terrible. 

I am sick to death of caring so much about how I appear to the rest of the world.  It is exhausting and I know it means I don’t love myself enough.  As sickeningly self-help bookish that may sound.  But I don’t.  I think about how my time on this earth gets shorter every second and how I spend so much of it thinking about ways to make myself appear more acceptable for everyone else’s eyes. 

I need a makeover.  Desperately.  An internal one – one that will powerwash these ridiculous doubts out of my system and replace them with the strength to be exactly who I am.  To love exactly the way I look.  The goals of losing weight and getting in shape and having better skin and whiter teeth need to be replaced by feeling better, being healthier for the future, taking care of myself.  Finding ways to accomplish these things that don’t make me cringe or feel guilty for not completing.  I have learned: I don’t like the gym.  I hate it, in fact, and if I want to be in good shape, I need to find alternative ways. 

Sometimes I go to sleep at night thinking I have failed at my day.  I didn’t work out, I ate crappy, I didn’t do the dishes, I skipped my morning yoga, I ignored my bike sitting in the garage, I didn’t cook the vegetables in the fridge that I know will go bad soon.  Lately I’ve been thinking these thoughts are eating me alive.  A few nights ago, I was writing down all these negative thoughts in my head and a list of “goals” to complete in order to make myself better.  Then I realized, perhaps I should start writing down some positive things about each day.  Maybe I should put down the proverbial crowbar I’ve been using to internally beat the shit out of myself with and focus on the fact that no one is going to make me feel better about who I am if I am the one making myself feel bad in the first place. 

It wasn’t an epiphany of any kind.  Just a thought.  Cause my insides are kind of bruised and my ego could use a break. 

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher