Please enjoy this excerpt from my new book:
You, Beautiful: Getting gorgeous from the inside out.
Coming soon!
No time to read? Listen here!
Think of the last time you had a bad experience on the highway or spent an hour on the phone with customer “service” that ended up being anything but.
Or maybe you had to be around someone who said things like:
- “I actually like this room. You should try to make the rest of the house look this nice.”
- “You forgot your phone again? You are so out to lunch!”
- “Do you really think fries are a great idea? Those pants are looking a little tight.”
Sometimes a person’s hurtful words can do more than ruin a day. They can hijack an entire week or more.
A choice
But there’s another option, one that has good self-care written all over it: we can decide that the negativity caused by someone’s hurtful words isn’t ours at all. Instead, it belongs to the person putting it out. We don’t have to accept or process any input that’s unhealthy, unkind, or unhelpful.
We have a choice.
Imagine how strong you’d feel if it was impossible to offend you. If literally nothing someone said or did (or didn’t say or didn’t do) got under your skin. And not just strong in terms of the image you portray, but far more important, strong within yourself to know that someone else’s mood, ideas, and opinions were theirs and not yours. And, even if an insult were directed right at you, it really wasn’t saying anything about you at all. It was saying something about the person leveling it.
Out of reach
We grow more beautiful when, as part of a commitment to radical self-care, we do something I call a “flyover.” It means literally getting above and out of reach of anyone’s offensive comments or criticism. We suddenly sprout wings and soar right over them. They never even have time to touch us.
So decide what kind of wings you want: Monarch butterfly? Blue heron? Luna moth? Raven? Hummingbird? They are your wings after all, beautiful someone. Spread them wide and fly over the offense, so high that it gets smaller and smaller and is eventually so far below you that it’s completely out of sight.
You look really beautiful up there, by the way.