Why We Need To Quit Looking Into Mirrors.

I've been slowly reading through this book called Loveable by one Kelly Flanagan, and I came across a paragraph that hit me right where it matters; it struck a chord on a topic that I'm really passionate about.

"...We gaze into body mirrors, searching for the answer to our question of identity, and the shameful message slowly and subtly seeps into us: I am my body. I am my skin, my shape, my measurements, my weight, my firmness, and my youthfulness. I am my body, so I can make myself a better me by changing my appearance and preserving my youth. I can diet and exercise and poke and prod and have surgeries and get injections and buy more products. The numbers on the scale tell me who I am. The people who like or reject my body tell me who I am. The mirrors in the dressing room tell me who I am."

Ouch. Yuck. Ew. I hate that paragraph so much and yet I'm saddened and ashamed to say that I also relate to it a lot.

Or at least I used to. 

Back in the cringe-y days of high school, the days that I like to look back on as little as absolutely possible, I started to struggle with thoughts like: 'I'm not big, but I'm also not as small as some girls.' It was a simple thought, a quick comparison, but it still proved to be destructive. I shake my head, and my heart breaks when I think back to who I was and the painful thoughts I had only a mere six or seven years ago.

Kelly Flanagan talks further on in the chapter about the fact that:

"You can't think less about something by trying to think about it less...Whether you are looking at your body to judge it or accept it, you're still looking at your body. When you try to accept your body by focusing on your body, you are trying to solve the problem by practicing the problem."

And THAT is what was hard for my fifteen or sixteen year old self in high school. The more I focused on my body, learning to love it, realizing that my identity wasn't found in my body, the more I ended up disliking my body, not loving it, and feeling like my identity was found in it.

(Okay so maybe this post is sounding depressing? Let me change the mood real quick folks.)

I don't hate my body now.

It all started with stopping. Stopping the hatred, stopping the strict focus on what I was consuming (read: eating), stopping the thoughts that my worth was found in my body. It wasn't easy, and I couldn't do it cold-turkey. If I'm being completely honest here (which I want to be!), I'm still prone to struggling with some of those thoughts to this day, but it's all about stopping yourself when those thoughts come. Grabbing hold of them, and being kind to yourself by saying "NO. This stuff isn't true."

Something else that helped to shift my focus were certain posts that I would see on social media. Spoken like a true millennial, I know. But I'm serious! The amount of tweets that I would see to the effect of: "My life would be so much easier if I was just twenty pounds lighter...". Ugh. No no nooo. Things like that anger me and break my heart. Because no. You'll still be in debt, you'll still get into fights with your mom, your boyfriend will still hang up on you when you're being whiny (maybe idk), you might not get that promotion, that homework assignment will still be due tomorrow. Whether you weigh 210 pounds or 120. Your weight doesn't define you!

I really think that when I was in high school and seeing a bunch of other young impressionable people my age posting about wanting to be thinner was the breaking point for me. I was able to stop focusing on my own body and think about the situation as though it was someone else. It's easier for me to be objective.

And this chapter in Kelly Flanagan's book struck me right to my core because he points out something that I love advocating for, something I LOVE reminding my friends of. He points out what happens because of the fact that we spend so much time looking into mirrors.

"If you're focused on your body image - positively or negatively - you'll never get around  to focusing on your soul image. If you search for your identity on the surface of yourself, you'll never get around to searching for it underneath, at the center of yourself. What if you forgot about your body so you could remember your heart?"

Because, my dudes, your heart is really where it's at. I've met nice, loving, caring, make-me-laugh-til-my-face-hurts type people who society wouldn't say are "skinny".  I've also met people who fall into the same category of nice, loving, caring, make-me-laugh-til-my-face-hurts type people who are as thin as I sometimes wish I was. But then I take a step back from the situation and remember that their worth isn't in their body.

And neither is yours. So lets quit looking in mirrors, quit hating our bodies, and start looking beyond that, beneath that (trust me, I know it's tough - but we've gotta start somewhere!), and realize that our soul image is what truly matters.

Check out Kelly Flanagan's book here and if you wanna buy it (10/10 would recommend), you can do that here.