Valeria De Miguel Melo
Managing Editor
Our world is formed by perception; life is a mirror. How you see yourself is how the world sees you and how you see the world; self-perception ties into everything.
There is a term in psychology called selective attention. It is defined as “the ability to focus on a particular task or object while ignoring distracting or irrelevant information.”
And this ability can either be your worst enemy or your best friend because it gives you the power to decide what you notice in the world. If when you look in the mirror, all you can see is the things that you lack, there will never be room to see every blessing around you.
And there is a huge difference between an insecure person and a person with insecurities. The former lets their “flaws” consume them and those “flaws” are all they can ever focus on. The person with insecurities puts effort into loving every part of themselves and decides to notice that they bring so many things to the table, which means that their insecurities are infinitely outweighed by their values, personality, and charisma.
How you perceive yourself is important because it’ll determine what you can achieve in life. You see, if you spend your time obsessing over imperfection and how society views you, you will never take chances, because what if you fail? Even worse, what if you fail and everybody is there to watch?
The thing is that everyone has been conditioned to care what other people think, and unless that endless cycle of worrying about how you look to others is broken, you will never have the strength to chase after your dreams. Because everyone can dream, but who can actually accomplish? Only those who wholeheartedly believe they can do anything. A person who has insecurities, as opposed to an insecure person, will decide to view themselves differently than the people around them. In a world full of no, they’ll be a yes. In a world full of insecurities, they’ll be confident. But how can everyone achieve this?
You have to realize that who you were five years ago is not who you are today. We all have a past, and mistakes we’ve made, or things we’ve said that we believe should not have been said. But instead of letting that define us, we need to let it be the thing that builds who we will become.
When I was little, a person whom I admired very much told me I was not skinny enough or pretty enough to be loved. And I believed them. I took that belief and carried it throughout my life, which led me to choose the wrong friends because I thought I was not deserving of any loving relationship, and to dismiss compliments because I didn’t think my looks could ever be worthy of notice.
I spent years hating my body, my appearance, and even the way I acted, and I spent every second of every day trying to prove myself to those around me. It was only when I realized that the only person who had to be proud of me is me that I was able to finally love myself again.
If I take a second to admire how far I am from that little girl who was told she was not loved, I am able to build a new sense of self. And I get to create everything about this new version of me, which means I can decide what she is capable of. And so can you. But you need to stop associating yourself with the person who made that one mistake you keep punishing yourself for and decide who you want to be now.
You need to fully believe that this new version of you is capable of anything. If you do, your dreams will seem closer and more achievable, and now it’s just a matter of taking action. You will decide to look for the opportunities around you that will help get you to where you want to go, instead of noticing whatever you once thought held you down.
You can take advantage of resources around you, including self-love influencers like Tam Kaur and Spencer Barbosa, and podcasts like the It’s Not Personal Podcast on Spotify, which focuses on self-love and self-development, to propel you forward instead of comparing yourself and your life to someone else’s.
It seems silly that all we need is one tiny shift in our perspective to change our entire self-image and our ability to reach any goal we set for ourselves. It seems even sillier that not many people talk about how our self-perception affects us, or how loving yourself is a choice.
But hopefully you’ve realized by now that all the power is within you, and how you choose to view the world. Because if you focus on the things that bring happiness into your life, you will never have to look at the things you once believed you lack ever again.
caption: https://skylum.com/blog/mirror-photography-ideas-and-tips