Beautiful You

At eighteen, I arrived at college to find that I looked like no one else. My self-consciousness was amplified when a friend suggested that I try highlights on my black curls. In that moment, I internalized the idea that my hair wasn't right, that I wasn't right.

At twenty-four, I was a high school teacher, telling my students they were brilliant and smart and could do anything. Some days, despite my earnest efforts, I couldn't make them buy the truth I was selling. I packed healthy lunches every day for one of my soccer players who wouldn't feed herself. When another one of my athletes regularly broke into so much anger that no one could escape her derision, not even herself, I would sweep her into my arms and hold her, trying to calm her into believing in her own worth. When one of my mentees in a summer program said her boyfriend wanted sex, I reminded her that what she wanted was just as important. When the last day of school came, I called my students, one by one, to the front of the classroom while I played a song that reminded me of him or her—"Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, "Pride" by U2, "Everything Is Everything" by Lauryn Hill, or "A Wink and a Smile" by Harry Connick Jr.—and a reverent silence fell over that space, my students basking in being acknowledged. Each would sit on a stool in the front of the room while I celebrated a trait I appreciated most about him or her—inquisitiveness, compassion, passion, wisdom, patience—and my students relished the fact that their brilliance was being recognized.

At thirty-four, I was having lunch with nine seventh-grade girls at a local middle school when one of the guidance counselors, a woman in her late fifties whom I knew and admired, walked in to say hello. It was school picture day, and each girl had taken great care to get ready that morning.

"Are you getting your picture taken?" one girl asked the counselor.

"I hate having my picture taken," she answered. "When I was in fourth grade, I was the tallest kid in school. When I went to pose for my school picture, the photographer, who was a man, screamed, 'We have a big one here!' I've hated being photographed ever since."

"Do you like your height now?" I asked.

For a moment she looked confused.

"I love my height," she said. "And I shouldn't mind having my picture taken anymore. I have given that man so much power over my life, and he's probably not even alive anymore."

I know what it is like to want to believe in yourself wholeheartedly only to have episodes in your life lead you to question your own beauty and radiance. I know what it is like to try to help someone galvanize her own power, realize her own brilliance. It is, what I most wish to offer—whether I am spending time with a little girl in my life, a dear friend, an acquaintance, or one of my students. And it is what is offered here, in Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance.

In this book, you will find down-to-earth advice on how you can realize your own brilliance every day. But the true value of the book does not come from what's written on its pages. It comes from doing the work, from journeying toward insight and action through the exercises and reflections. It is a tool kit for self-awareness, positive self-esteem, and a healthy body image. The magic of this book begins with your intention—your desire to tackle what is limiting you, and your decision to love yourself, be happy, and feel satisfied with your body.

A poor body image isn't usually at the root of a woman's negative feelings about herself. A poor self-concept and lack of confidence are often at the core of a negative body image. Having a negative self-image or a negative body image is like always having a gate-crashing critic watching the events of your life as they unfold. What I have found over time is that self-acceptance is what most dynamically changes our negative self-concept and body image. And you can only find self-acceptance through the hard but meaningful work of assessing where you are, seeing where you have been, and planning where you are going—while enhancing your life along the way.

This book will take you on a journey that encourages you to develop a clearer sense of yourself. Over time, once you have a clearer sense of self, self-confidence will become a habit. Confidence is born from proof, and proof of your worth comes when you have cultivated and embraced your whole self. A positive self-esteem comes with knowing your truth, your reality, and arriving at a self-mastery that allows for resilience, pro-activity, and brilliance. And while this book's journey might begin by taking you more deeply inward, in the end it will help you move beyond yourself and into the world, where acting on what you have to offer does so much more good than worrying about what you look like.

The secret to success with Beautiful You is completing its guided daily practices. Daily practices yield new patterns of thinking, and those patterns ultimately yield new habits that will renew your sense of self in a positive, dynamic, healthy way. This book quiets you and moves you to find clarity; it encourages you to develop your own insights through compassionate observation and careful execution. This is a book that will leave you unsettled at times, so that you can eventually become more settled in life; a book that challenges you at times, so that you can develop a fresh outlook. By giving you the opportunity to consider, observe, do, and be, this book will help you recognize what is really beautiful—you, as you are. You are being invited to begin a process that will yield self-knowledge and deliver self-mastery.

We can all grow, no matter our history. We can all recognize our brilliance. Recognizing beauty, as it turns out, is a choice. You can see it the way the world hands it to you, or you can see it the way you want to see it.

There are a number of ways to use this book. I encourage you to use it in the way that makes the most sense for you. Some of you will begin on Day 1 and read the chapters in order, to Day 365. Others may check the Table of Contents and start by reading about specific topics that speak to them. You can work through the book alone or in a group. No matter how you enter it, the journey will be rich, and it will lead you to find something very important: yourself.

Feel free to begin by surveying the pages to get a sense of how the book progresses over the course of a year. Don't worry about spoiling the ending. This is a book that you do, not just read, so perusing it won't take away the surprise, joy, or revelations to come.

Each daily practice begins with a passage that may be part autobiographical, part informational, part inspirational, and ends with a suggested task for the day. I encourage you not to feel overwhelmed by the tasks. Many of them are short. Some are more fun than tedious. All of them are a gift to yourself and your world.

Choose a time each day to read the passage and plan for how or when you will do the exercise of the day. Some readers may find that it makes sense to read each passage with a morning cup of tea or coffee. Others may choose to read a passage each night. If the task involves a journal exercise or other reflection, you can do it right then. If the exercise requires you to take some sort of action, to step out in your world, you can save it for the next day.

Some passages and tasks will really appeal to you; others may turn you off. Resist the urge to turn away from the ones that seem daunting. Those are often the exercises you need most. There are some tasks that just won't be relevant to you, given where you are in your life. If that's the case, just move on. Finally, you will discover that some of these tasks—looking up when you are walking, eating mindfully, quieting your critic—can be done every day. Ultimately, each task is designed to be practiced at least once, but I hope you find that many of the tasks become part of your routine—that completing them that day is really only the beginning of your journey with them.

This book was written as a guide to an individual's journey, but by no means do you need to make the journey alone. In fact, doing it in partnership with someone else or in a group may even push you to engage more deeply in the process. If you'd like to do it in a dyad or group, here is some insight on how to facilitate the process.

First, how do you find your dyad or group? Consider the people you feel closest to. The greatest support and encouragement will come from those who believe in you. Keep the group to a reasonable size so that everyone will have the opportunity to participate.

Before you begin the exercises together you can each share your intention for engaging in the process. Also share your hesitations, worries, and hopes. Then, as a group or a partnership, discuss your shared goal. It can be more than encouraging one another on your journeys. Share your visions. Lay it all out on the table. Then consider some guidelines for the process. Your first guidelines might reflect how you wish to interact with each other as you share and encourage.

Here are a few guidelines that should be a part of your list.

Our brilliance shines most when we are in a place where we know that we are both accepted and safe. Our space and time together will be one that fosters both qualities.

Everything shared is held sacred and in confidence. Our journey is our individual story to tell. No one else should share someone else's story outside of the group without expressed permission.

Our feedback will always be honest, thoughtful, and supportive and will build on our strengths.

Our goal is always to grow and move forward. We will support one another in this process and push one another to recognize, celebrate, and offer her brilliance to the world.

You will also want to consider when and how you will come together. For some groups, it might make sense to have a monthly meet-up where you discuss the exercises that have had the most impact for you. It might also make sense to have a weekly check-in over email.

Mothers may choose to take this journey with their daughters. If you are completing Beautiful You with a teenage or young adult daughter, it might be helpful for you to read ahead every Sunday to see what is coming and to determine how you'd like to navigate the exercises and your sharing based on any familial history.

Helpful questions along the way for every dyad, cluster, and group to consider in their regular meetings include:

How are you doing?

What is challenging you about this process?

What is satisfying to you about this process?

How have you grown?

What have you learned?

What has changed?

What are you noticing?

What did you love doing?

What did you skip and why?

What are you anticipating?

What was an epiphany you had this month?

I wish I could promise you that your path on this journey will always be up a ladder, that you will climb past an issue and never revisit it again. But that is not the nature of our lives. Instead, our journeys are more cyclical. Like the lover who comes back at different times in our life, so will some of our issues. Our greatest hope is that when we see the old lover again, when the old issues resurface, we can approach them as the person we are today, not as the person we were the last time we dealt with them.

Here is what I want for each of us: the ability to experience the world as we see ourselves, not as how others see us or how we perceive we are seen; the ability to live now rather than someday. I want us to understand that a negative self-image is a beacon, calling us to explore what is really going on deep within. I want us to use that beacon to arrive at a place of understanding and clarity. I want each of us to break free from the idea that narrowly defined external beauty is everything, and instead embrace and see the beauty in our inner selves. By taking the Beautiful You journey, you alight on a path that will be good to you, that will allow you to settle into who you are, that will give you the tools you need to be your truest self.

There will be days when you want to turn away from this journey, when it will feel too long, too demanding, too difficult. The important things in life are hard that way; the tough things teach us who we are, the impossible things allow us to arrive at what matters. There is no quick fix to improving our sense of selves. Every day, you can find a story of someone who medicated herself with plastic surgery, weight loss programs, or new relationships in order to find happiness, only to find that she's not that happy with the very thing that she thought would cure her.

There is no quick fix to improving your self-concept. This book guides you through the slow, deliberate process of enhancing your life through your own personal empowerment. Give yourself the room and time and attention to grow your sense of self. However you feel about yourself, those feelings were not created in just one day—and addressing how you feel about yourself will also take more than a day, and more than several. Changing your self-image takes time, attention, discipline, and desire. And it gives us back so much more than that.

Please be aware that this book is no substitute for therapy or treatment if you are suffering from an eating disorder or body dysmorphic disorder. If you suspect that your problems may be clinical in nature, I encourage you to get the help you need from a trained professional as the first step in your journey.

Poor self-image is not just the province of the young. It affects women of all ages and is not limited to any socioeconomic situation, race, culture, or worldview. The way we feel about our bodies, our dissatisfaction with our bodies, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It bleeds out, affecting how we feel about ourselves and the life we are living.

Too often, we believe we will finally be content when our body changes in some way. Actually, we'll be content only when our mind changes, when we give ourselves permission and the tools to be content. The key to feeling better isn't looking better. It is feeling better about our lives and better understanding what our bodies really are—vehicles in which we can experience life. Our bodies are not life itself; they are objects of motion, not admiration.

If we stop the world's racket and engage deliberately in our lives, we change ourselves. Beautiful You provides the tools—vision, passion, purpose, resilience, productivity—for every woman who wants to see beauty in a way that is true to who she is and not in the way the world hands it to her.