Competitiveness has its place. We need to make ourselves marketable when
looking for jobs and applying to schools.
It’s all right to be competitive when playing sports or games, to a
certain extent. And yes, seeking to have
an edge over the opponent in a presidential debate is essential.
Never Good Enough
Few things make me sadder than competition in one thing: looks. Both
men and women have become obsessed with their bodies. They compare to peers and to celebrities and
to airbrushed bodies in magazines. Sometimes
they compare to themselves (e.g. wanting the same body they had in high school). This competition is detrimental and
unnecessary.
What’s so bad about comparing? It can never satisfy and never bring about happiness. Comparing leads to some form of hatred toward
others, ourselves or some part of your body. Even if you can see that you're smaller than someone or prettier than someone, does that really make you feel good about yourself? It often sets us up with unrealistic expectations of what we think we
should look like. Some even go to
drastic measures to alter their looks with plastic surgery, breast
augmentation, excessive exercise, and disordered eating habits. Even after doing these things, the result is
often the person still doesn’t feel good enough. The self-criticism doesn’t
stop. Increased muscle definition and
loss of body fat may never seem good enough to satisfy the negative eye.
Confidence and
Self-Care
I wish more people had confidence in themselves. Are you only your external self? If someone single thinks they have to have a
perfect body to get married, they will continue to be too self-critical even
after marriage. From my work experience,
I know without a doubt that getting married doesn’t always change how women
feel about their bodies, no matter how attracted their husbands are to them. They still compare to others, often to their
own detriment. Advice from good husbands
who have sat in my office: If they say
they think you’re beautiful and find you attractive and tell you you don’t need
to change, they mean it!
On the other hand, if you marry or date someone who
thinks you should have a perfect body, they are likely going to be emotionally
or verbally abusive if they haven’t been already. You don’t want someone like that. What happens when you get pregnant and your
body changes? Is he going to tell you
that you need to lose weight or get a tummy tuck or he will divorce you? As sad as that may sound, that’s a true
example of the distorted way some people think.
What happens when someone wants their body to be seen as an object? That person loses some respect for himself or herself. And then, it's often difficult for them to find others who will respect them.
Poor self-image is in direct correlation with
self-confidence. People of all sizes can
have good self-esteem and focus less on what they look like. When people learn to stop criticizing
themselves, they can learn to accept their bodies and eventually love who they
are. People can’t have a healthy self-image when they think they need to be
competitive in how they look.
There’s a difference between caring about what you look
like and obsessing about what you look like. Looking your best is important. Taking care of your body is important. Exercise is important. Eating right is important. But that doesn’t mean you have to nip or
tuck, run until you pass out, starve yourself, or emotionally binge on food and
then compensate. Instead of one more hour at the gym, think about the numerous other possibilities of the use of your time.
More Than A Body
Stephanie Nielson is an inspiration. She suffered from severe burns in an airplane
crash and wrote a book about her experience.
Her message: I am not my body.
One of my neighbors is a paraplegic man who is always out
and about in the neighborhood in his wheelchair. He didn’t allow paralysis to
get him down. He got married anyway. He
never fails to give anyone a smile who passes him by. He could easily hate his
body. Some days, he might. But I don’t think he allows that to be the
focus of his day.
I’ve been inspired by a quadriplegic I heard on
YouTube. He says, “All my life, I wanted
to be able to do one thing better than anybody else and was very unsuccessful, and
then I had my accident and I thought, ‘Ya know, maybe I can be the best quadriplegic
on a respirator that ever lived.’ And then, wouldn’t you know it, Christopher
Reeve goes out and breaks his neck. And
I’m in competition with Superman.” I love his sense of humor.
Not Worth It
Think how lives could be different when people stop comparing and obsessing about their looks. We are meant to be happy. We weren’t given a body to worship it, nor
was it given for others to worship. So
stop treating it that way. When you work to develop confidence in yourself, the comparing tendencies can fade away.
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