You Hate Photos Of Yourself That The World Finds Beautiful
Try this test — take a bunch of photos of yourself. Choose your favorite. Then show all the photos to people you love — ask them to choose their favorite. The people you love often choose the same imagery. And their choices almost never reflect your own.
Where the loving others choose images with open mouth smiles, big silly grins, and moments of impromptu laughter — we often choose less free, more posed and rigid choices for ourselves.
I saw this trend time and time again as a video editor. Showing people clips of themselves in a video was always excruciating. And not because they disliked what I had done, but rather because they were so critical of themselves.
While we love it when other people let go and have that huge open mouth smile — we hate it in ourselves! It’s an opportunity to see those teeth that aren’t quite white enough. That vulnerability in our eyes that we usually don’t let the world see. And that freedom in our personality that is reserved for special moments with intimate loved ones.
We are simply too hard on ourselves. Seeing an image of a friend having a moment of total laughter will bring happiness to us. But when we see the same image of ourselves, we often go to a place of self-conscious stupidity. We would never treat the ones we love with the same brutality we treat ourselves. And — this is bullshit.
Recently I had some serious health issues…
I had 3 surgeries in two weeks. And about 2 weeks of really tough recuperation after that. The first few days after my last surgery were probably the darkest of my life. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. And the idea that it would get better seemed next to impossible. I’ve never been to those depths. BUT — in that moment, when I talked to people whom I love, EVERYONE knew I would be ok. Every single person said something to the effect of “You’ll be fine, you’re strong.” Many times in the lowest moments I thought — “if they only saw me now!” But in retrospect, they would have said the same exact thing.
You see, these dark moments are just like a collection of photos. You literally sit with yourself, in your own head, and make choices about how to respect or disrespect your own person. Sadly, many of us — myself included — don’t give ourselves anywhere near the respect that we give others. During my moments of sickness, I knew deep down that I would be ok. But similar to sitting with an image of an open smile and criticizing teeth whiteness or crookedness instead of seeing the pure bliss of a happy moment — when we sit with ourselves in dark moments, we often only see our weaknesses.
We have to reach out. To ask for perspective. To ask others the same questions we’re asking ourselves. And we have to have the strength to realize that in our darkest moments, other people often have the best perspective on just how successfully we’ll exit these problems. We have to have the strength to realize that we can’t choose the photo with the beautiful open mouth smile and laughter — we’re simply too critical.
Self perception is flawed. Reach out to others.
As always you can reach me at ryan@zeroslant.com
