Dr Deepak Dugar, Inner Beauty Expert, On How to Learn to Finally Love Yourself

I wrote myself a note to read daily, and in that note, I talked about all the things and people that I’m grateful for. I try to remind myself to read it every single day, as just a gentle reminder once a day of what my goals are, what my most important focuses are, and what the reason and the purposes of my life are, and usually 90% of the list is family oriented.

As a part of our series about “How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself” I had the pleasure to interview Dr. Deepak Dugar.

Deepak Dugar, MD is a Beverly Hills-based Plastic Surgeon and beauty expert turned activist, initiating conversations in the industry about beauty that comes from within. Dr. Dugar is the only Board Certified Rhinoplasty Surgeon in the United States whose entire surgical practice is dedicated to Scarless Nose™ Surgery, however, he is best known as the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon who isn’t afraid to say “no” to his patients. After more than 10,000 consultations with patients from around the world, Dr. Dugar knows that an honest conversation can often be more profound and powerful than any surgical outcome. To learn more, please visit http://DrDugar.com/.

Thank you so much for joining us! I’d love to begin by asking you to give us the backstory as to what brought you to this specific career path.

I’ve always been enamored with the concept of helping people, even from a young age. I think it all goes back to the summers I spent in Calcutta, India, working at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. We spent time in her orphanages helping the children learn to play, read, write, do math, and even some of the most basic things in life such as accepting people for who they are. Becoming a physician was a natural step in the progression of wanting to help people, and understanding that insecurities about ourselves can sometimes mask our true inner beauty led me in the pursuit of helping people identify their beauty through plastic surgery.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you hope that they might help people along their path to self-understanding or a better sense of wellbeing in their relationships?

I am working on a very exciting new project entitled “Be-YOU-tiful” which releases worldwide on May 1, 2022. This book, which has been endorsed by Tony Robbins, is a compilation to help understand where and why we have so many insecurities about ourselves with regards to our beauty perceptions. It utilizes data and studies to help us flip the script and celebrate our true beauty as we already are beautiful human beings. In addition to this book, we are working on some other exciting TV projects aiming to help people come to a deeper awareness of where their insecurities and beauty perceptions actually come from.

As most of us don’t have enough awareness on this topic, we look at people who are confident about the way they look versus people who aren’t. It usually comes down to the awareness they have regarding their own permission to feel beautiful. There are many subconscious triggers that take away from our ability to feel beautiful, and once we can identify these triggers, we can also slowly start to unlearn them. That’s the intention of the book as well as the TV projects in hopes that more people can identify themselves as being beautiful.

Do you have a personal story that you can share with our readers about your struggles or successes along your journey of self-understanding and self-love? Was there ever a tipping point that triggered a change regarding your feelings of self acceptance?

My personal journey was interesting as a kid, because I was always a very average and mediocre kid growing up until I entered high school. I became interested in Bollywood dance performances and also started to take school more seriously. All of a sudden, I went from being a mediocre, normal kid to being a superstar, who was number one in his class while also achieving the highest SAT score in his class. I was also the lead performer for all of our Bollywood stage plays and dances. There was an emotional trigger when I realized that being “the best” was a subjective definition, as I had always identified it as being an objective definition that others put upon you. Once I realized that this was a subjective feeling that you’re allowed to have, should you desire to have it, it almost made me question everything I was doing and why I was seeking the attention I was trying to garner. Thankfully, my path towards medicine and becoming a physician led me to a much deeper purpose: to utilize the attention that I was garnering to help others instead of myself. I started defining my purpose to be about other people and helping to uplift them, either through surgical crafts or through conversations, and I realized it is much more rewarding than ever trying to become “the best” for my own personal ego.

According to a recent study cited in Cosmopolitan, in the US, only about 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women are “very satisfied with their appearance.” Could you talk about what some of the causes might be, as well as the consequences?

This is a tragedy, and if you look around the world, it is even worse. Another study shows that, globally, only 11% of young girls identify themselves as being beautiful, and it gets worse as we age with only 4% of women identifying themselves as being beautiful. However, over 80% of women identified other women as being beautiful. Therefore, there’s a perception issue where we often are taught to be kind to each other, but we completely forget to be kind to ourselves. There are also studies that show that young females who don’t feel attractive tend to withdraw from social activities or sometimes even from school completely, because they would rather abstain than go to school and participate while feeling “ugly.” This is a major problem, and I think that some of the major causes are, again, awareness and perceptions. We’re feeding our external validation measures rather than working on our internal validation, and especially for young kids, these awareness techniques need to be taught rather than letting social media and their peers guide them. Therefore, social media and peers should not be the leaders of our children’s thoughts. There should be emotional teaching and awareness teaching given at a young age to allow them to realize that they are in control of their thoughts and perceptions of themselves.

To some, the concept of learning to truly understand and “love yourself,” may seem like a cheesy or trite concept. But it is not. Can you share with our readers a few reasons why learning to love yourself it’s truly so important?

To some, the concept of learning to truly understand to love yourself may seem like a cheesy, trite concept, but it is not. Learning to have appreciation and love yourself can sound cheesy, so replace it with whatever phrase you want, but maintain the meaning of being grateful for yourself, for what you have, and for where you are in life. However, the key and the reason it’s so important is because it’s hard to attain more without having gratitude for where you’ve come from and where you are now. Subconsciously, it can be very difficult for you to continue to work and strive to improve your life if all the work and effort you’ve put in up until this point are not being celebrated. Therefore, common sense would say, “If you don’t appreciate what you’ve achieved at this point, why would you continue to try to achieve knowing that the outcome will be also under-appreciated?” So the whole goal of life is to realize the most important sentiment that can reflect who you are and how you think about yourself: “always be content with what you have, but never be content with who you are.” So it’s important to understand that it’s important to love yourself and appreciate what you have mentally, physically, and financially as well as the people in your lives, but to never be content with who you are as a human being, and always strive to continue to improve.

Why do you think people stay in mediocre relationships? What advice would you give to our readers regarding this?

Well, I think the number one thing to think about when you’re in a relationship is to think of it from a grateful standpoint. What are the things that you have to be grateful for in the relationship? Make sure you’re not undervaluing those things, because sometimes our perception of being in a mediocre relationship may just be that it’s a normal relationship, but you’re not valuing and being grateful for enough. If you are grateful for all the positives and all the reasons that the relationship should be appreciated, and yet you still don’t feel like it’s giving you the energy and the purpose that you desire in life, then you have to now carefully calculate all the negatives in the relationship. Is your partner abusive physically or emotionally? Is your partner supportive of your goals? Is your partner understanding of your needs and of your emotional desires? These are all things that have to be calculated, then you compare and contrast the risks and benefits of the relationship versus being single. If the negatives of the relationship are so severe, that they outweigh the possible grateful benefits that you can appreciate. It’s time to move on. However, if you are under-appreciating, and this is more of a situation where you are lacking gratitude in the relationship, it’s really important to be careful, because there’s no guarantee the next relationship will give you any more satisfaction if you’re lacking the gratitude in the current one.

When I talk about self-love and understanding I don’t necessarily mean blindly loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. Many times self-understanding requires us to reflect and ask ourselves the tough questions, to realize perhaps where we need to make changes in ourselves to be better not only for ourselves but our relationships. What are some of those tough questions that will cut through the safe space of comfort we like to maintain, that our readers might want to ask themselves? Can you share an example of a time that you had to reflect and realize how you needed to make changes?

A question that I would recommend readers ask themselves would be, “If I were to die today,

what would my list of regrets be?” In addition, “If I were to die today, who would miss me and why?” Here’s the hard one to ask yourself, “If I were to die today, whose life would improve subsequently?” The third one’s the most important to really ask yourself because you have an ability to make the world a better place every day. If you’re making someone’s life a negative place, it’s good to analyze and realize that early on, so you can make the changes for those people to reverse the narrative that you’ve created. I think one of the times that I had to reflect and realize was when I was finishing college and starting medical school, and I was under appreciating the value of where I was in life at that point. I went to a combined medical program from high school where I had guaranteed admission to medical school. I lost track of the concepts of how hard it is to become a doctor in that lack of gratitude. I was leading myself down a very dark spiral where I had to catch myself and realize how lucky, grateful, and thankful I should be for where I was in my life. That allowed me to reposition myself into the place that I’m in now: able to appreciate, grow from, and help so many other people.

So many don’t really know how to be alone, or are afraid of it. How important is it for us to have, and practice, that capacity to truly be with ourselves and be alone (literally or metaphorically)?

I think you have to be someone who is enjoyable to be with by yourself before other people will truly appreciate your comfort and your energy. I think often we get lost in absorbing other people’s energy and giving away energy instead of realizing that there is also supposed to be a sense of enjoyment and gratitude for being present within one’s own energy. Just like when you’re around someone who has great energy, and you feel so warm, loving, and invited by them. You should also create the same type of energy for yourself. I think it’s important for everyone to be very comfortable being alone with themselves for at least an hour or two a day. Many people are alone for most of the day, and if you really study most people’s routines, we really spend more time alone than we may realize, including the time we’re sleeping and dreaming. Therefore, it makes so much sense that we should make the place where we spend most of our time, which is alone in our heads, a warm and loving environment.

How does achieving a certain level of self-understanding and self-love then affect your ability to connect with and deepen your relationships with others?

I think the better you know yourself, the better you can help other people through effective communication. When we’re caught up with ourselves and we’re in a situation where we are in a negative self journey, it’s hard for us to think about other people’s emotions and other people’s thoughts are responses to our behaviors when we can’t even give ourselves the effort and time to analyze our own emotional responses. I think self awareness is one of the most important tools to achieve better relationships with other people. When you understand what makes you happy or sad, you’ll be much more conscious of impacting other people with those same behaviors that elicit negative responses from them.

In your experience, what should a) individuals and b) society, do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?

For individuals, I believe the best opportunity they have to understand and accept themselves is to practice a deeper sense of gratitude for what you already have rather than always coveting what you don’t. I think the most acknowledgement and acceptance that a person can ever have is usually deeply rooted in the gratitude for the things that they already have. Regarding society, I feel like it’s decreasing the expectations that we have for other people around us. I think as a society, we hold ourselves and each other to such high standards. I think the key in life is to hold yourself to high standards without beating yourself up and to hold society to lower standards and be more accepting and grateful for what others do for you instead of being judgmental for what they don’t do for you.

Here is the main question of our discussion. What are 5 strategies that you implement to maintain your connection with and love for yourself, that our readers might learn from? Could you please give a story or example for each?

1. I wrote myself a note to read daily, and in that note, I talked about all the things and people that I’m grateful for. I try to remind myself to read it every single day, as just a gentle reminder once a day of what my goals are, what my most important focuses are, and what the reason and the purposes of my life are, and usually 90% of the list is family oriented.
2. I try to always spend as much time as I can with my family in an undisturbed way as much as possible. It’s tough in today’s world where you’re always connected to your cell phone, but it’s important to try to put it down and to just spend time with your family when you can.
3. I tried to give uninterrupted time to my wife directly because I realize that our relationship is the core strength of our family’s relationship including our extended family and our kids. Without my wife and I having a core strength then the rest of our family becomes somewhat weakened. Therefore, I’ve learned to give her undisturbed attention and energy at all times.
4. I do strongly recommend taking some personal time for yourself if you yourself are not in a good state, especially when it also affects other people. Therefore, I strongly believe it’s crucial to do things that are important for you. I personally take time to soak in a hot tub and exercise on a regular basis no matter how busy my life is. I’ve found that my personal well-being is so critical to me being the best person and partner for my family and for all the people around me.
5. I try to absorb as much positive content as possible. I think it’s important to realize that we subconsciously absorb so much negative content on a daily basis through social media like our Instagram and Facebook feeds. I think it’s important for us to start to take control of the narrative and only allow positive content into our eye line, so that we’re able to have a more positive mentality instead of having a negative mentality because of subconscious, toxic inputs that we’re unable to filter.

What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources for self-psychology, intimacy, or relationships? What do you love about each one and how does it resonate with you?

I am very interested in multicultural beliefs. I listen to Joel Osteen podcasts all the time, and I’m not Christian. I listen to Swami Chinmayananda on YouTube for all of his old talks and SWAMI Ishwara Ananda for his current talks. I am a devout Hindu, but their lessons and morals go way beyond any religion. I also am a huge believer and listener of Tony Robbins. I love his content. I think he’s really appropriate with how he just connects the realism that all of us need sometimes to improve our lives through more sensible approaches. I think sometimes the “kumbaya” strategy of just loving yourself and living your life is difficult for most of us who live very busy lives with a lot of mandates and needs every day. Therefore, I think Tony Robbins has an amazing approach to self self psychology, relationship psychology, and understanding that relationships are not places you go to seek and receive things, but relationships are places you go to give things. I think these are some of the most important and powerful people that I continue to study every day.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Maybe we’ll inspire our readers to start it…

I think, if I were to start a movement, I would want people to practice daily morning gratitude, meaning waking up every morning and posting about things that they’re grateful for, and instead of feeling like it’s cocky or arrogant to do so, understanding that it’s just positive energy towards yourself, and there’s no shame in that. Every morning wake up and actively talk about what you’re grateful for whether it’s texting your friend, texting your family, putting it on WhatsApp, family chatter, group chatter, friends chats, social media, or just doing it yourself in the mirror. Subsequently, you can convince other people to try to practice the same habit of being grateful every single morning.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that you use to guide yourself by?
Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life and how our readers might learn to live by it in theirs?

This is an abridged version from the Bhagavad Gita, where the upgraded version says, “Always be content with what you have. Never be content with who you are.” I discussed this earlier in the interview, but the main morals and lesson behind that quote is understanding that we want to always continue to improve the path we’re on as a person, but we’re not always trying to covet more things. The way you look, what you have, what you’re earning, and where you are in life are things to always be grateful for, because the more gratitude you have towards where you are today, the more likely subconsciously you’ll continue to work hard knowing that you’ll continue to appreciate where you’ll end up in the future. However, always being content with what you have and not with who you are and understanding that you as a person is a constant journey, you will continue to change and evolve. This is something that should always happen. You should never feel like you are finished as a human being, and you should always aim to improve.

Thank you so much for your time and for your inspiring insights!