Appearance Does Not = Worth

How your body looks has nothing to do with what it can do. And what you can do when you stop caring is going to make you love yourself so much.

I used to care a lot about my image. I often stopped myself from doing things until I felt ready. But the thing is, feeling ready often corresponded with feeling positive about how I looked, and only then could I feel comfortable enough to simply liiiive my liiiife. The issue is I didn’t often feel positive about how I looked, so I rarely live in that space.

Caring so deeply about what I looked like only ever took things away from me. Time, mostly— and what an absolute waste—energy too, but most offensive of all, it stole away the opportunity to grow and produce in my ACTUAL areas of value.

The things we can accomplish when we stop trying to be an “after” photo, or fix that thing about our body you never can quite get right might shock us.

You don’t get anywhere good by putting other people’s opinions of you above your own.

Your image has nothing to do with your worth, or even how you actually feel about yourself.

In fact, when I had professional hair and makeup everyday, and access to expensive clothes and money, it only led me to learning how to live in compromise. On some of the coolest days filming renos for my HGTV show, I’d be stuck in tight jeans and constricting clothing, unable to move or do what I wanted— dive into the demo, and bend over without worry, and get my clothes and face dirty by accident as I always do because I’m kind of a messy-clean person! Instead, I had to care about how that looked on camera, so I learned to learn how to live and move in a way that would be okay or pleasing to others while remaining super uncomfortable. Yet here I was, “looking my best”.

Thing is, feeling positive every day and second about your looks is a losing battle because you may never be satisfied with how you look—and so what! Live anyways. 

Don’t tell your friend she’s pretty when she feels un-pretty. Tell her four things about her you love that have nothing to do with looks. Then get her to do the same to herself. You don’t have to be in love with how you look to be happy. And there’s also nothing wrong with improving or even altering your appearance. It boils down to acknowledging that your worth has nothing to do with your image. What your body produces has nothing to do with how it looks.

And, actually, the things you’re good at that you could be working on with the SAME AMOUNT OF OBSESSION AND PASSION we do our physical appearances, will surprise you. You’ll finally be able to produce things that will make you fall in love with how truly dope you are! 

You don’t have to be an after photo to be valid. So stop holding yourself back because you have physical hangups and share your ratty, truthful, WIP self. 

Living in a healthy body will be your best body.