Of self-love and men

Growing up, I used to be a tomboy and play with a lot of boys. We’d gather in our backyard and kickball until dinner, when my dad would summon me from the balcony, by whistling his signature ‘it’s time to come up’ melody. 
I’d eat my meal as quickly as possible and get back to the backyard to play some more. We’d get lost in games, until the moon starts shining as bright as a lightbulb on top of our heads, which were too busy to notice that it had gotten way beyond bedtime.
It’s not that I didn’t have any girlfriends- I did. Yet our friendship was often driven by competition. It wasn’t as fun as playing and getting lost in the moment. It was a race of who will get the most attention from boys, who were just hitting puberty and discovering the art of kissing. Who’d get the best grades. Who’d be the teacher’s pet. Plenty of ‘who’s’. 
I grew older and, as I’d like to think wiser, however I did carry this voice of comparison in my head into adulthood. I never addressed the voice consciously. I never sat down and reasoned with it, telling it ‘Look, I get that you want me to be the best, but my best has nothing to do with Amy’s best or Sophie’s best.’ 
Our society has made this little voice of comparison thrive in our heads. From the papers graded at school, which you compare with your peers to the beauty industry, which sets a standard, confining beauty to very specific, uniform, skinny and often unhappy and unhealthy standards. 
So carrying that voice with me didn’t make the Bali transition easy. Bali is known for homaging a beautiful tribe of people coming from all parts of the words. People often joke that the island must be shipping all the unattractive people to Australia, right? 
I’ve never seen as many bodies on display as I do on a daily basis on the island. It’s not done in that ostentatious way, it’s just natural. The weather is hot, you’re in your bikini the whole day. The surfing and fitness community is a huge force, so everybody is looking after themselves, their shape and looks. 
The first few times I went out here, I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by all these beautiful people around. Tanned, fit, stylish. All looking straight out of a fashion magazine. The voice in my head was flying- there were so many looks to compare mine to and to put myself down based-on them. 
Once you start listening to this voice, feeding it, agreeing with it and putting it on a pedestal, you’ve paved your way to suffering and dissatisfaction. It didn’t take me long to realize this. I was me, I was looking after myself, I was eating right (most of the time) yet I was far from sporting the perfect model body. And this ate me alive. It took me flowing in between the extremes of not eating and then punishing myself with food, to really take a step back from these destructive habits and address where all of this was coming from. 
It was stemming from this judgmental me, the voice which would work against me, which would remind me that I’m not good enough, not as good as X or Y. 
I had to realize that the way out of this self-criticism maze wasn’t me self-punishing, dieting, exercising, changing my hair. No, it was a whole other move. It was nurturing the love I had for myself. And that was a game changer. Flipping 180 degrees around the story “I’m not good enough’ to ‘I’m unique, I am enough. Nobody else in the world can offer exactly what I can offer. I’m one of a kind.’
Do I have times when I still fall off the self-love wagon, lured by that little voice, which wants to take me back to the self-criticism side? Yes, yet now I know how to get back quickly to the mindstate I want to be in. When I catch myself comparing to other people, I go back to that place of love (which Gabrielle Bernstein talks about and refers to as “A Holy Instant.”)
If I catch myself staring at someone’s body during a gym class, only to feed my insecurities, I acknowledge that these thoughts are coming from a place of fear, of fear that I’m not matching a fabricated standard I’ve set. The great part about acknowledging where these thoughts are coming from, is that you identify the source and once you get closer to the source, you recognize that you have the power of changing it. Witnessing that I’m coming from a place of self-judgement, I can go back and reroute. I can go back and tell myself “ wait a second, is that the way I want to go”? What if I express gratitude for showing up, for giving my body the juicy movements it needs to thrive and what if I acknowledge with joy that there are other women around who have shown up to do the same. 
I have a friend here, who (maybe )doesn’t even know how much she taught me about self-love. She’s a yoga teacher, who also became a self-love coach later on, practicing what she preaches. 
I remember taking my first yoga class with her, shamefully admitting I was thinking ‘ wait she doesn’t really look like a yoga teacher, based on her body shape.’However, minutes after the beginning of the class, I forgot all about my judgement and gave into her soothing voice, her direction and the flow. She still is one of my favorite yoga teachers here. She’s young, she’s ambitious, she’s different and isn’t afraid to say it and show it. On the contrary, she makes this work in her favor. On her platform she openly shares how she did have her body struggles herself, her self-love lows and anxiety moments and how it took her getting to this place of love, to really change her life around. Starting with the perception of herself. 
It’s immensely powerful to know and recognize that both self-love and self-critique come from the same place. Understanding that the root of any beliefs we have towards ourselves lays in our own consciousness, is one of the most liberating things. Why? Because we can go right in there, see through all the black and white thoughts we’ve been holding towards ourselves and decide to give them some colour. Maybe the colour of self-love. A gentle shade of peach.