One day at the hair salon...
Confidence and Beauty make for strange bedfellows
Photo courtesy of Alexander Possingham
A good friend of mine went to the hair salon today. For reading material, she brought the book I co-wrote with Linda Ford: Women and Confidence: the Truth about the Lies we Tell ourselves.
As she explained the premise of the book to her hairdresser, the owner of the salon came by to say ‘hello’. Noticing the book, he asked to look at it and began flipping through the pages until he finally settled on the first chapter: I can’t be confident if I don’t think I look good. Chuckling to himself he then loudly declared, “This is absolutely true. I’ve made a whole business out of this because I know women”.
What the owner misunderstood in his excitement, however, was that each of our chapters represents a LIE that women tell themselves, not a TRUTH. The salon owner’s response simply illustrates the very prevalent and entrenched thinking many of us have around confidence and physical appearance.
As explained in our book. there are two BIG truths that turn this LIE on its head:
“External circumstances (including physical appearance) have absolutely no power to make us feel a certain way. We may be physically beautiful or believe that we’re not; our bodies may be slender or overweight…None of it is the reason we feel happy, sad, beautiful, ugly, insecure or confident.”
“We are not our bodies - We are not a beautiful or an ugly face. We are not a thin or a fat body. We are the soul or essence within.”
So…while it may seem like confidence is inextricably tied to physical appearance…that is simply not true. It is an illusion and a trick of the mind that is reinforced over and over again within our culture.
If you would like to read more about this LIE as well as the other LIES we cover in our book, please check out our information page at womenandconfidence.com