Think about a time you bought a new car, bike, boat or house and how you felt about it when you first saw it. You probably fell in love with it and thought it was absolutely perfect, and you were so excited to buy it.
Then, after owning it for a while, slowly over time the novelty wears off and it wasn’t such a big deal anymore. If it was pre-loved when you bought it, maybe you even discovered a few little problems or imperfections that you didn’t notice at first. So over time reality paints a not-so-perfect picture of it.
It’s human nature to feel differently when you see something from afar to when you actually own it. There’s an old saying, “familiarity breeds contempt”. Maybe contempt is a strong word, but we certainly are much more critical of what we have compared to something we don’t have, which we tend to value so much more.
The same goes for our body. We look at others who are in great shape, and we see them as perfect, but when we look at ourselves in the mirror, all we see are imperfections. This isn’t a healthy way to live your life! If you had the body of your favorite fitness model, you would be over the moon for a while, just like getting a new car, but once you got comfortable with it the novelty would die down and you would start to see the flaws, just like you would in a car, and where it needed improving.
So don’t ever beat yourself up about your flaws. EVERYBODY has them. Even if you can’t see them in others, they can in themselves. So learn to love and feel proud of what you have, and stop seeing the imperfections that will never be gone – they are what make us human.
The same goes for when we’re trying to get into shape, we are quite often our own harshest critic. When we’re trying to get fit and not progressing as fast as we would like, we look at women who are doing better and feel like we don’t measure up.
Why not look at the thousands of women who are doing nothing at all, and never will, and be proud that we’re not one of them? If you’re making an effort then you have nothing to be ashamed about, just keep going and you will get to your goals. When other women start admiring you, you will realize how far you’ve come and you will be glad you started when you did and that you stuck with it!