What exactly is beauty? What does it even mean when something or someone is “beautiful”? And most importantly, how can you see yourself as more beautiful? Watch today’s video Q&A and find out!
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Awesome Alex’s Burning Question:
Dear awesome Melody,
“What is beauty? From an energy point of view, I think if people knew what beauty really was we could adopt that belief and have much better view of our bodies.”
Transcript
Well you’re absolutely right Alex! If we do know what beauty is then we can feel better about ourselves, and that’s really the clue to your answer. There is not one standard of beauty; everybody is always looking for that one standard of beauty. What is beautiful? What is beautiful in the media? Other people try to fight that and say, “Well that’s not what I think beauty is!” Some people, for example, see in the media that thin is considered beautiful and then somebody comes out and says, “Well I think curvy women are beautiful, or curvy men are beautiful.” Then you get somebody who comes along and says, “What?! Are you skinny shaming now? Are you telling me that skinny people aren’t beautiful?”
All of that fight always comes from the fact that we think there is only one answer that everybody has to adhere to, that there is one standard of beauty. I will tell you how many standards of beauty there are: As many as there are human beings on this planet. That’s only the human perspective though, animals, plants, rocks and trees; everybody gets their own perspective as well.
A better question to ask
The question shouldn’t be “What is beauty?” The question should be, “What is beauty to you?”
When you are in the state of seeing something as beautiful, you are actually in the state of appreciation, with non-judgement. You can look at something and say, “I think that this is beautiful and I’m not going to look for anything within it that isn’t quite so beautiful; I’m not going to see anything that isn’t perfect. To me this is beautiful; I’m going to appreciate this. This person is beautiful; I’m going to appreciate them.” You get to decide what is beautiful to you; you get to notice what is beautiful to you. The less you look at the stuff that isn’t beautiful to you and judge it, and try and get it out of your reality so that it doesn’t ugly up your reality, the more beauty you will see. The more you focus on beauty, the more beauty you see. Be careful though, not to fall into the trap of saying, “This is beautiful”, as in, this is the standard of beauty.
Everything can become beautiful to you
I think we would all be very well served if we all added the disclaimer To Me, as in “This is beautiful to me; I think this is beautiful; I consider this beautiful. Do you consider this beautiful? Do you consider something else as beautiful? What do you consider as beautiful? … Oh, that’s really interesting.” Do this instead of fighting each other. Sharing what we feel is beautiful with each other will always bring more beauty into our lives because I’ve got to tell you, when you really start to adopt this mindset, you will consider yourself much more beautiful because you cannot get into a state of appreciation for everything and not include yourself!
Everything then becomes beautiful. I meditated on an Angler Fish the other day, and if you’ve never seen an Angler Fish, look it up on Google, hit images and…..brace yourself! By the conventional standards of beauty, this fish is not a beautiful fish and yet I realized its absolute perfection, its absolute beauty. It’s such a piece of amazing biological technology, I couldn’t help but find it beautiful. When you include the spirit and the consciousness of every living thing, and that actually includes everything in it, and you connect with that, it just becomes even more beautiful.
Bottom Line
Never concern yourself with what somebody else thinks is beautiful or if somebody else thinks you are beautiful, because all they are telling you is whether they’re currently in a state of appreciation when they look at you – or not. It tells you nothing about your own ability to see yourself as beautiful.
I hope that I’ve answered all of your questions contained within this question. If not, if you have any other questions or want to join the discussion and have something to say about this topic, leave me a comment below. As always when it comes to these potentially volatile topics, I’d like to remind people to please stay respectful. If you listen to the video, I explained why you might want to fight with each other – maybe don’t do that and just express what you feel is beautiful and allow other people to do that as well.
If you like this content please consider sharing it with somebody who would also find it valuable. Huge happy shiny puppy hugs to all of you, and see you next time.
Bye!
I find many things really beautiful and I would be typing out this comment for the rest of my life if I had to type them all out. So, I will name few things I find truly beautiful and the prizewinner, I will save for the last. 😉 So, here goes: 6. People who don’t judge other people. 5. Sleep. 4. The resilience of the human spirit. 3. Mascara 2. A pencil and a blank piece of paper and 1. Melody’s voice (the best!)
Hi All,
It is true. I used to be so picky about movies, but in the state of appreciation I find myself saying I love this movie. (Then I laugh to myself because I know where it is coming from.) I just love.
Melody I will be in Spain in a few days, if I make it to Barcelona I would love to buy you a drink and tapa. Vale?
Love to all.
Howdy Mi,
Actually, I’m no longer in Barcelona. I’m in Germany now, and will be in the US next month… Sorry!
Huge hugs,
Melody
Hi Melody
Back in January this year, I attended my first Shamanic Practitioner course. One of the first journey’s our teacher gave us was to go out and speak to nature. I stood in the middle of a stone circle surrounded by ancient trees, with a river running wildly beside me, and the question I asked was “Why do I never feel beautiful?” I was so unhappy in myself and attributed all my insecurity and feeling unworthy to how I look and I how I wish I looked differently. The answer from nature came through immediately and very strongly even though I was so new to Shamanic work. The answer was “Because you never look for the beauty in anything” and I was shocked, because it was true. I was at an ancient Celtic sacred site and had not looked beyond my own insecurities to appreciate the feast of beauty that was all around me. I kind of felt the ground tilt beneath my feet a little bit and then went into a holy experience which the only word I could think of to describe is Oneness. I felt at One with the trees, the sunlight, the blades of grass, words can never describe this fully, but we were all communicating with each other and there was such a feeling of acceptance, love and benevolence, it was true beauty!! Since then I remind myself often to look for the beauty even in the worst circumstances. Funnily enough, although I’m 44, no one had ever told me I am beautiful. Since this journey in January, many people have, even strangers, and I really take time to allow those words into my reality. And I love looking for the beauty in them too.
I agree with CJ…there are definitely some people who are stunningly beautiful, turn heads, and pretty much everyone would be appreciative of their beauty while looking at them. Even if this is completely superficial/ego-level beauty, it’s definitely there. I see some models on Instagram who are so stunning, it feels unfair, why didn’t my higher self choose to be born as beautiful (even if in an ego-level way) as them? They have a level of physical beauty that is really beyond the everyday, and some have even become famous because of it. While I’m focusing on lack right now, most of the time I focus so intensely on beauty, admiring and appreciating it, yet I’m not nearly as physically beautiful as others I see.
There have also been numerous studies showing how humans generally prefer certain proportions, ratios, features, and other traits in faces that signal good health and high genetic quality. We are hard wired to find certain characteristics and patterns as beautiful, while others capture our attention less.
It’s difficult to accept that I will never be as stunning or beautiful as some of these other people I see, and it really sucks to be honest. I guess this lifetime my soul wanted a different experience coming in (which really upsets me now, because I still desire extreme physical beauty so badly, but it has never been there and never will be.) I will have to come to accept this though because I cannot spend the rest of my life sad because I’m not really pretty or beautiful. We can’t always get specific things we want, but we can accept what we have and be ok with not having more.
When I felt this way, I’ve asked myself, what do I really want then? You want to feel appreciated and praised, because perhaps you don’t already feel that way, and you see your appearance as an obstacle to experiencing those feelings, but your appearance doesn’t determine your reality, your vibration does. In truth, our looks are neutral, they don’t and can’t make us feel anything, but we can attach certain ideas and thoughts to them that make us feel crappy, which influences the kind of experiences we end up manifesting.
I did an experiment with this once. I didn’t change a thing physically, I just changed the way I saw myself. When I saw myself as the frumpy, undesirable girl, no one really paid me any mind. When I focused on my qualities, people started noticing me more, particularly guys who seemed really sweet. They would smile at me, looking at my eyes, instead of staring at my body, lol.
So I do know where you’re coming from, because I’ve had very, very similar thoughts, but there are people out there who do and will appreciate your beauty, you just haven’t seen them because you aren’t letting them in. How can you encounter these people otherwise, if your vibration says “Everyone praises beautiful models, and I am not a beautiful model, so of course they won’t praise me”. That’s just going to be mirrored back to you, as it was to me. Change your thoughts a little and see what happens. Don’t hold anyone or anything else responsible for what you manifest in your experience. I understand where you’re coming from though, I really do.
I also kind of disagree with the “everyone finds models attractive” thing. Not everyone has this kind of knee-jerk reaction of awe when they see a model. I understand how it’s really difficult to fathom it when you find someone absolutely gorgeous, but another person doesn’t really seem to care all that much. I’ve been there, done that too. There is a celebrity who my friend is convinced is so delectable, but I don’t quite see it lol. I’ll agree with her that the guy is pretty cute, but I’m not like hosing myself down or something. You’ll see this all of the time if you expand your idea of what beauty means to other people, and go beyond what you perceive it as. For example, and this was on the morning news once, a woman posted a photo of her and her boyfriend online, and a bunch of people had crappy things to say because she was a petite blonde, and he was a heavy-set guy. They didn’t think he “deserved” her (society associates appearance with worthiness as well as quite a few other things, but I’m not going to get into that), and she retorted with saying she loves him for exactly who he is (she said more than that, but I don’t remember it word for word). Then people started posting up their photos of themselves and their partner that, from a societal perspective, you wouldn’t expect to be together because one matched the “ideal of beauty” and the other didn’t. So yeah, it’s very likely that there is someone out there who will find you beautiful, pretty, etc. Not everyone cares about or agrees with the societal ideal of beauty, even if it’s really hard to fathom that they don’t. You’d be surprised how people’s ideas of beauty vary. For example, there are some people who are only attracted to the person they have romantic feelings for, and don’t care much for how anyone else looks. My friend knows a couple of people like this.
I don’t know, this is a pretty big topic and I don’t want to end up writing a huge wall of text, but this is just some of the things I’ve come to understand as I’ve explored this subject.
Oh, Debbie’s comment below is a really good example of what I mentioned in the first and second paragraph. 🙂
Hi April,
Thank you for your perspective. I agree that a lot of how others perceive us is how we perceive ourselves. For me though, it’s not really about finding a partner. It just feels better, even if it’s not a great feeling, to just accept not being pretty, beautiful, or photogenic. Maybe in another life, but not this one. I am unattractive, mostly in the face, so I try to just find other things I like about myself that do not include appearance.
Hi Anon,
Yeh the goddamn universe has its own agenda unfortunately!
“You truly can have anything you want!… [except if you want to be smokin’ hot and rich – individual results may vary]”.
But you can make people think you’re hot by acting that way. Here’s a little story you might like. I’m usually a bit self-conscious about a certain physical feature of mine [x]. So I decided to concentrate all night on “people love my x”. A girl came up to me and STUNNED me by saying “when I first met you I thought you had an unusual looking … But now I’m like ‘I realllly like that!'”.
She was cute so I rewarded her in the best way I know how. Good way to end the night.
Good post Melody.
At the ego level, here are some people who are plain and others who are beautiful. That’s undeniable. Lingerie models ARE stunningly beautiful.
Then as the ego is surrendered, gradually, beauty can be seen in everything. It’s a softer, warmer beauty.
Hi Mel fab post thank you and I love the line that Kathy has picked out it is really powerful. For me when I tarted to get curious about giving myself the same love and appreciation that I gave to others everything started to look more beautiful.. I also took on board these ideas… What would it be like for you to recieve the smile that you give to others .. What would it be like to focus on and value your essence your NESS rather than compare and pick your self apart…
I love the idea of us all expanding and appreciating others view of beauty so much xxxx
Ahhh Melody, loved this. As always you light the way.
As a 40 something [ahem] woman, I only recently realized I am beautiful. Really beautiful inside and out. Before, I was both young and beautiful but believed only young.
I was a silly girl.
For me, it was much easier to see beauty in others. I finally made it around to seeing the beauty in myself. The true test I guess.
So from one Goddess to another: huzzah!
Hey Melody, thank you for the wonderful video. It did give me a huge insight into what beauty truly is , and this is especially true for people like me who are currently on a weight loss programme, and after having lost some weight , feel stuck as they need to clean up their beliefs by creating newer ones that serve them and get their weight loss going in the path and pace at which they want .. I would like to also add that beauty can be truly experienced more by feeling it , it doesn’t really matter what you actually see .is it true ?
Chaitrali
Melody!
I happen to think you’re very beautiful! This post was beautiful too! Thank you!
Marjorie 🙂
Hi Melody! This question always sounds so simple and unassuming but it touches deeply into how so many people believe in both scarcity AND in “not-enoughness.” I like what you said, ” When you are in the state of seeing something as beautiful, you are actually in the state of appreciation, with non-judgement.” I am also reminded of what Wayne Dyer always said with, “We don’t see things as they are (including beauty) we see things as WE are.” May we all remember that the choice to see and be beauty is always within. ~Kathy
Hey Melody
I really liked this post. I have been thinking a lot about this lately actually. Like any other woman that grew up in an image-conscious society where we are constantly being reminded of all our ‘flaws’ and the myriad ways we can ‘fix’ them, I have developed my fair share of insecurities and what not. While I haven’t quite kicked them, I feel like I have made great strides in not focusing so much on what I don’t like about myself. I am less concerned whether other people perceive me as attractive, though like anyone, a compliment can put a pep in my step. I think traveling helped me release on a lot of that because I spent prolonged periods of time removed from the environment where I was receiving that input that made me start feeling that way in the first place, and I detached more and more from my appearance. And each time I come back to that environment, I am less and less affected. It’s a tricky balance between caring about how we look and wanting to feel attractive, which is totally fine, and not getting too consumed by it.