Recently I have been speaking to companies, corporations, Associations and individuals about a topic that had not been one that we would publicly speak about. No it’s not sex, drugs, religion or any of the taboo topics. It’s one that until now, many of us hid…and did it quite well. The topic is CONFIDENCE and it’s something that many of us struggle with… and many more of us deny we have trouble with.
This morning I was glancing through a magazine that caught my eye. In the middle of the cover was an article called “The Keys To Confidence”…you can bet I started to thumb through it and hopefully find even more data for this new awareness of this old struggle. I was completely disappointed as the entire magazine was about losing weight, plastic surgery, dental procedures, eye lifting, butt enhancing and the list goes on. Where will I kind the Keys to Confidence in any of these featured stories and ads? Perhaps it should be called “Where Did I Lose My Keys To Confidence” instead.
What are we doing to ourselves, our daughters, our granddaughters? What about our husbands and sons and grandsons? This issue of the magazine was about gifts to give for the holidays. If your husband came home with a gift certificate for weight loss, I would bet you could release 180 pounds or so by tossing him out the door? All kidding aside, we are not creating happiness or joy or gratitude or confidence or loving ourselves when we read these magazines. As we get older should we hide the fact that we have lived decades and have the amazing life changes in our faces and bodies to prove it? The children you brought in to the world, the bonus children you inherited by choice, the places you’ve visited, the lives you’ve changed…certainly that accounts for something…doesn’t it?
Today I am without internet service. Who knows why and who knows when it will return. Instead of pouting and doing nothing, I decided to pick up some of the magazines I had put in a pile to read and pull out articles that I could use about programs I want to write and add to. I guess this magazine was not the right one to start with except it gave me a reason to write a blog post.
It’s time to be kind again. Kind to each other, kind to strangers, kind to those that need our help, kind to our friends, kind to our family but most of all…kind to ourselves. Confidence doesn’t mean photo shopping ourselves to look like a model. It doesn’t mean we look beautiful only after we have plastic surgery or lose weight. It means we look in the mirror and love who is looking back. Susan Sarandon said it best, “I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less and issue and what you are is the point.”
Go ahead, take a good long look. I don’t know about you but the person you are seeing has the “Keys To Confidence” that you are looking for.