How to Feel Beautiful

Beautiful Unique You

The key to being beautiful is knowing that you already are. But sometimes it's hard to acknowledge our own beauty when we just don't feel beautiful. Here are some things you can do to remind yourself that you're already beautiful.

1. Look in the mirror, look at others. You don't look like them, they don't look like you. You're unique. No one else looks like you (unless you have an identical twin, but even then, your personalities and expressions are unique). Say to yourself, out loud: "Unique is beautiful." Because everyone is beautiful in their own way, don't let anyone tell you different.
2. Let go of all ideas that promise "beauty" and instead aim for health. Trim your hair if it will make it healthy, lose or gain weight if it will make you healthy, use homemade skin creams and toners to keep your skin healthy, or eat healthy foods to be beautiful.
3. Exercise! Studies show that exercise can provide positive mental health as indicated by relief in symptoms of depression and anxiety. Overall, it makes you feel better about yourself as well as give you more energy.
4. Smile! Even if you don't feel like it. It'll make you feel and look a lot happier!
5. Do what you're good at. For example if English is your forte, write essays, or if you're brilliant at sports don't be afraid to play matches. If you are good at math give yourself a tricky challenge to do each day, by solving it you will feel happy and that will make you feel beautiful!
6. Embark your day by exclaiming to yourself in the mirror each day when you get up how awesome and beautiful you are. That may seem selfish, but it will help you feel good.
7. Treat yourself! Buy yourself a smoothie, go for a walk in the woods, watch a movie at home with your friends, or read a new book. Do something that doesn't involve how you look.
8. Accept others for who they are as well. Just because someone is a different shape, size, or color than you doesn't mean that they don't deserve to have self confidence as well. Give people around you reasons to make them think that they are beautiful. If you do that to others, it will make you feel good, and you'll realize that beauty is abundant - around you and within you.
9. Be nice to others. That will make their day too! The most beautiful person you can ever see with a nasty attitude isn't beautiful at all.
10. Make everything around you beautiful, whether this means decorating your room with nice lights or positive pictures from magazines, having beautiful surroundings will make you feel beautiful too! Write "confidence-boosters" on post-it notes, on fridge magnets, on the bathroom mirror with eyeliner... places you're bound to see it.
11. Your life is what you make of it. If you make yourself out to be beautiful, then that's the way you live your life, so live your life to the fullest, most beautiful way possible, and that's the way you will feel!

As a photographer, I can easily see beauty in the subjects of my photos. Not so much in myself.  I pick myself to death, erroding my self-confidence and happiness. This cell phone shot was taken just after my youngest daughter, Paige, straightened my hair for the first time. Normally my hair is slightly waving and I just wash and go, no makeup, no hair products, no beauty rituals at all. Paige is totally the opposite, she sometimes takes as long as an hour or more to get ready. I was resistant to her working on me, but she wanted to so I gave in. The result? My hair, which is a dirty blonde, looked lighter and shiny. I could not believe the difference! How could something so simple change so much?

But it did! It changed my whole outlook for the day. I felt beautiful. I smiled more. My daughter, who is only 17, showed me something that I should have been showing her. Just a few minutes can make all the difference. Let's embark on this journey to seeing our own beauty together. Who is with me?