Recovery Quotes: Beauty

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Confucius

Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.

Margaret Cho

Beauty - in projection and perceiving - is 99.9% attitude.

Grey Livingston

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fact is, there really is no such thing as 'normal' - everybody's different, and that is the essence of their beauty

Kevin Aucoin

Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It's about knowing and accepting who you are.

Ellen DeGeneres

Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.

Justina Chen

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

David Hume

There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.

Steve Maraboli

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. 

Leo Tolstoy

There is no definition of beauty, but when you can see someone's spirit coming through, something unexplainable, that's beautiful to me.

Liv Tyler

People are more than just the way they look.

Madeleine L'Engle

Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic.

Rosalind Russell

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.

Matthew Fox

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be, because we are all what we choose.

Margaret Cho

You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable.

Steve Maraboli

To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you be imperfect and beautiful, too.

Victoria Moran

There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.

Edgar Allan Poe

You don't have to be perfect to be pretty

Carson Kressley

Beauty comes in all sizes, not just size 5. 

Roseanne

The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.

 Kahlil Gibran

You are beautiful. Know this. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply lying. You are beautiful.

Steve Maraboli

Beauty is the illumination of your soul.

John O'Donohue

Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head.

Garrison Keillor

Glamour is a shooting star, it catches your eye, but fades away; beauty is the sun always brilliant day after day. 

Mike Dolan

Get Off The Scale!

You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance.

Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life.

It’s true; the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!

Steve Maraboli

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

P.C. Cast

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

Khalil Gibran

There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.

Conrad Hall

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Maya Angelou

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair.

Audrey Hepburn

As if you were on fire from within.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Pablo Neruda

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

Sophia Loren

By choosing healthy over skinny you are choosing self-love over self-judgment. You are beautiful!

Steve Maraboli,

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Marcus Aurelius

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Rabindranath Tagore

What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.

Scott Westerfeld

I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.

Drew Barrymore

The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.

Vik Muniz

Beauty... when you look into a woman's eyes and see what is in her heart. 

Nate Dircks

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are the eternity and you are the mirror.

Kahlil Gibran

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.

Ninon de L'Enclos

I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness.

Karl Lagerfeld

See also: Self-Defining Personal Beauty

See sidebar menu for more Recovery Quotes and Images

picsourcehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/samlavi/3859006459/

Self-Defining Personal Beauty

Just because you are blind and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 

I love this quote by Margaret Cho. "My beauty," she says. How potent a statement that is. She's not comparing herself to anyone else or condemning herself for not meeting the beauty standards so often set by society and so deeply ingrained in our culture. She is claiming her uniqueness, her personal beauty despite another's possible inability to see it for themselves. That's powerful!

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Confucius

We, all too often, fall into the trap of disliking ourselves simply because we don't look like the images we see everyday, an altered beauty that is impossible to achieve. Photoshopped thinness, erased blemishes and imperfections, plumped and distorted body parts have become the norm. We rely on these images and the opinions of others to define us, so much so that we have blinded ourselves to the beauty we posses... our personal, unique beauty.

If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.

Matthew Fox

There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.

Conrad Hall

How much time have you wasted by not recognizing your own beauty? How many things have you avoided because of how you perceive yourself? How much more are you willing to miss out on?

Beauty is not about how we look. Beauty is so much more. It's a glorious compilation of all the things that makes us who we are. It is self-defined. Self-defined. That makes it the responsibility of each of us to recognize it, nurture it, and proclaim it as our own no matter what anyone else thinks. 

It's time to reevaluate, redefine, and reaffirm our own personal beauty. It is time to refuse to let the blindness of others to affect our own sight. It is time to confidently present ourselves to the world with self-acceptance, self-love, and self-respect. That is positively mesmerizing. That is... beautiful!

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

Sophia Loren

There is no definition of beauty, but when you can see someone's spirit coming through, something unexplainable, that's beautiful to me.

Liv Tyler

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Marcus Aurelius

picsource:http://www.flickr.com/photos/starsalive/4012182601/

Accepting and Loving Your Body

Bodies. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are unique. Each one an original creation. Bodies are a true example of diversity. They do so much for us every day, yet we judge them by their appearance instead of accepting them and loving them as they are. We compare our bodies to the bodies of others. We scrutinize them, pick them apart, and find fault. We wish we had thinner thighs, bigger breasts, or flatter tummies. We wish we were taller, shorter, or less wide. We feel ashamed, embarrassed, and cheated by what we see in the mirror. We may hide ourselves, deprive ourselves, or berate ourselves because we feel our bodies are not good enough. We allow our bodies to define us.

It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.
Pema Chodron

Why? 

Opinions vary and overlap about the whys of body dissatisfaction. One being that we are bombarded, everyday, by images of women (and men) that have been professionally lit, creatively photographed, and photoshopped resulting in a visual misrepresentation of reality. Despite the diversity of bodies in every day life, the media has created a narrowly defined and unattainable image of beauty.

A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. 
Naomi Wolf 

Fortunately, these practices are no longer a carefully kept industry secret. Many have lifted the veil, exposed these methods, and informed the public. Search the internet and you'll find many examples of photoshopped fashion/beauty images that compare the true image to the final product. Actresses have come forward to speak out against their images being digitally manipulated. Some have bared their bodies as proof that what you see on a slickly designed magazine cover is not what you'd see in reality. There has also been a push to require photoshopped images to come with a warning/disclosure stating the image has been altered. 

We are raising a generation of children who see these images and believe them to be real. Children who are dieting in elementary school, or being diagnosed with an eating disorder at the age of 5. Grade school children who are focusing on their body's shortcomings and loving themselves less. 

So, what can we do about it?

We can stop buying into the hate. We can stop permitting an industry who relies on our dissatisfaction with ourselves (in order to make money) to dictate what beauty is. We can teach our children that what they see in the media has most likely been altered and is not a fair and true representation of the human body. We can lead by example by accepting ourselves and loving ourselves. We can start being grateful for all that our bodies do for us, and less concerned with how are bodies stack up against the hype. We can reteach ourselves to love our individuality. We can start by redefining beauty. We can begin by realizing that we are beautiful just as we are.

...say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks.

Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others. .

Oprah Winfrey

Commit to accepting your body. Commit to loving and appreciating your body right now, just as you are. Take a step forward in the direction of body acceptance/love, and another step, and another step... every day.

There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.

Steve Maraboli

How are others doing it?

For me, loving my body is something that is a long way in the distance. However, accepting my body how it is is something I've accomplished. Just getting to that point was a long journey. By accepting myself, I've gained confidence. By gaining confidence, I've been able to love little things about myself. I am a curvy girl, but ED does not discriminate. Some of the little things I love are my curves and the shape of my legs. Learning to love little things has given me the peace of mind I need to get down to a HEALTHY weight HEALTHY way. Regular exercise, but not too much and eating healthy things without bingeing and without restricting. My recovery is only beginning, but I can't wait to love myself completely, fully, and unconditionally!!

Jessica, 17 yrs

I suffered with an eating disorder for many years and I have found that one of the hardest parts of recovery is learning to accept/love your body. For me it is something I still have to work at daily. For me the process really started with accepting that what I was reaching for was really unrealistic and my therapist pointed out to me that unless I literally got bone removed I would never achieve my goal. So it started with that realization and then my dietician was able to prove to me that no matter what eating disorder “behaviors I used” I was not really getting where I wanted to be. SO…I eventually had to accept that my body may be a little smarter than me and know where it needs to be. Now, I am simply at a place where I may not really like my body and I still have a struggle accepting that this is what I will look like forever…but I can accept that in this moment this is where I am and so I can torture myself or accept it .  Some steps I have had to take in my recovery have been to distance myself from media image on the internet, magazines, etc. Also, I have had to continually have an internally dialogue disputing my negative body thoughts and have had to start speaking up against others body bashing. Overall, it is a daily process and simply taking one more leap of faith, and one more step forward but it is worth the journey. I no longer take 3 hours to get dressed in the morning and am able to go shopping with my friends again…Also, at my Masters graduation for the first time in a long time I was able to take a picture and not start crying after seeing it! IT was a great feeling.

Kelly, 27 yrs 

 I am still in the process of learning to accept my body; however, I can see how far I have come. Acceptance began when I was respected sexually. My boyfriend, now husband, did not pressure me to have sex when I didn't want to. That opened the door to me reclaiming ownership of my body. Once I saw it as mine, I began practicing appreciating what it did for me. I put it through hell! Yet my body is resilient and bounced back. Now I am starting to be open to the idea that other things beside my weight determine my worth. Accepting that I am worth more than that number is awful because then I see all the pain poured into hating something that was really okay. .. but more than that it is amazing because I can finally have moments in life where I am content. 
Courtney, 24 yrs 

Learning to love and accept my body has been the hardest part in my recovery, and even though I consider myself free from Ed, I still find myself having "bad body" days. Days where I feel "fat" and don't want to do anything. But I have learned how to push through these days by remembering that the feelings won't last forever. They are bound to disappear because feelings are not fact and they come and go continuously. Feeling "fat" or gross one day does not mean you are in fact "fat" or gross. I've learned that tomorrow I will probably wake up feeling amazing about myself so I hold on to that thought and keep going. Remember that you are beautiful no matter how you feel inside or what those Ed thoughts are telling you. Fight back. 
Tayla, 20 yrs

I fight my battle with words, positive words and daily gratitude, words that give me a why: why should I keep my scale beneath the sink? Why should I love the girl in the mirror? Why is there more to life than counting (weight, calories, seconds on the treadmill...)? My why is puppy dog kisses and long walks in the mountains. My why is laughing with my siblings, cultivating a fulfilling career, writing in coffee shops on the weekends. My why is dreaming of a better future--working toward a future--and knowing that any future I take part in requires more than skin and bones. I still do math--in my head, walking past the mirror or as I crack my eggs for breakfast or tie on my walking shoes. But the words--positive words and gratitude--fill my head and crowd out the numbers, and, for today, I have the peace that lets me work toward a recovered tomorrow. 
 Kaila, 26 yrs 

Start living life fully now, in your present body… 
Linda Bacon 


 If you would like to share your experience with learning to accept/love your body to be added to this post, please email me at mrsmenopausal@yahoo.com.



picsource:http://www.flickr.com/photos/aarika/5446195707/

Love Your Body Day 2011: 5 Ways To Celebrate

It's LOVE YOUR BODY Day!

You are not defined by the reflection in your mirror. You are an amazing creation both inside and out. It's time to let go of the negative images you hold of your body and give it (and you) some much deserved love!

5 Ways to Celebrate Love Your Body Day

Use Body Positive Affirmations:

I treat my body with kindness. I make healthy choices that benefit my body. I am grateful to my body for all that it does for me. My body is worthy of my own love and respect.

My beauty cannot be defined by my physical appearance. My worth is constant and undeniable. Today I celebrate the beauty of my mind and my spirit. Today I appreciate the amazing and unique individual that I am.

I am grateful for my body. I nurture and take care of my body. I take time to appreciate my body for all the wonderful things it allows me to do. Today I treat my body with dignity and respect.


Put it in Writing:

list the wonderful things your body does for you.

list the wonderful things you will do for your body.

write love notes (encouraging and positive statements) to yourself and hang them on the bathroom mirror, the dash of your car, tuck one inside your pocket/purse.


Squash Negative Self-Talk:

Replace old negative inner talk with positive statements. Do it each time you find yourself thinking or saying something negative about your body and/or yourself. Say them with meaning. BELIEVE them. Positive self-talk brings about positive results. You'll be amazed!


Be Confident:

Forget about weight, size, and imperfections. Be confident in who you are. You are beautiful just as your are!

Be who you are and say what you feel 
because those who mind don't matter 
and those who matter don't mind.
Dr Seuss


Pamper Your Body and Your Mind:

Take a long, hot bath. Use scented candles, essential oils (lavender relaxes, sweet orange lifts your spirits, grapefruit energizes and cheers), or bubbles, and oils to moisturize.

Listen to your favorite music

Relax

Slip on your softest, most comfortable pjs and your old fluffy robe and settle down for the night with a book or a movie.


Give your body some extra love and appreciation today, tomorrow, and from here on out!


How are you celebrating Love You Body Day?

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

NOW Foundation (National Organization For Women)

picsource:http://www.flickr.com/photos/qthomasbower/3657889982/in/photostream/

Be Body Positive Day 2011 is Right Around the Corner

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Bombarded by images and messages from the media, and society in general, women are faced with often impossible standards to hold ourselves and our bodies to.

April 7th, 2011 welcomes the second annual Be Body Positive Day. It's all about loving yourself, loving your body, and seeking healthy pleasures. It's your right! 


The event is the creation of the non-profit organization,  
The Body Positive: 

The Body Positive is a community of women and girls who support each other in laying down the burdens of judgment, comparison, and shame. We include ourselves—and all women—in our definition of beauty because we believe that soul expression and life force are the qualities that make a woman truly attractive. We have chosen to pursue joyful healthy lives with a focus on purposeful living.

So take this day to treat yourself to some extra special, self-loving activities and appreciate yourself and all women, everywhere.

Do at least one thing that makes you feel great about your body! 


Ideas to help celebrate Be Body Positive Day:

• Write yourself a love letter.
• Go for a walk along the beach, in the woods, or somewhere you love, and take notice of all the beauty around you. Bring your camera with you!
• Take your favorite book into the tub and have a long soak. 
• Squelch those negative thoughts and replace them with positive, self-appreciative ones.
• Journal about how wonderful your body is.
• Remind yourself how grateful you are to be you.

 What are you going to do to celebrate Be Body Positive Day?



Connect with The Body Positive: 
Org  
Facebook
Twitter



picsource:http://www.flickr.com/photos/luder5/4223909842/

Body Image and Self-Esteem Links: National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Body Image and Self-Esteem Links:

Letters To My Body

The Body Image Project

We Bite Back's Post-Its Project

Body Image Tests

Self-Esteem Tests

Self Worth


Video:

Body Image and Self-Esteem


Organizations:

Children's Body Image Foundation

Reflections The Body Image Program

Body Image Health Org

The Now Foundation


Related Quotes:
Self-Love
Self-Worth
Believing In Yourself
Our Bodies

*If you know of any Body Image/Self-Esteem Organizations/Foundations, please let me know and I'll add them to the list.

Picture source:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alosojos/ / CC BY-NC 2.0