Self love is all the rage these days, but learning self love is not a straight shot. We don’t just wake up one day and love everything about ourself from this day forward. It is a practice, and sometimes we have to practice it minute by minute. The belief that we can immediately love everything about our self is consistent with a perfectionist mindset, and is in fact part of the problem. Belief in the never good enough attitude and the need to be perfect before we can love ourself, makes self love and an impossible feat.
Sometimes looking at (what you perceive to be) ideal looking people on social media stirs up those familiar negative self emotions. If you feel that way, read on for a different perspective.
There are views and angles that make people look better or not. The popular shots are often the ones that only show the good side.
So what?
Those pictures can only piss us off us if we let them. We always have control over our perspectives. Letting someone else’s pictures make us feel inferior, is our choice. We can choose to be happy for them and drop the comparison attitude.
Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison is thief of joy” He apparently was way ahead of his time. But then again maybe this comparison problem has been around a while, and is just being exacerbated by social media.
Consider this possibility. Those ideal pictures may just be a way for that person to practice her own version of self love. That woman may have as many insecurities as the next person, and her post may be her personal strategy for learning to like herself.
Another social media trend is to post realistic untouched pictures of real women with belly rolls, cellulite and (gasp…) wrinkles! These people are also learning to self love and they are expressing themselves in a way to prove that they are worthy of self love in spite of their imperfections.
I am not saying either of these are right or wrong, because opinions are subjective, personal and irrelevant to others. These posts may simply be how some people practice self love.
This comment by Simon Sinek sheds some light on the social media selfie trend:
“When you compete against everyone else,
no one wants to help you.
But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”
Those pictures are not there to make us feel bad. They are not there for comparison purposes. I prefer to view them as lessons and expressions of the person who shares them.
How we react to them is our choice.
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3 Comments on “Self Love in the Age of the Selfie”
Thanks for sharing Judy. I agree; it’s all a matter of perspective.
Perspective is really so individual. We can always control two things, our effort and our attitude.
We can always control our perspective.