When I look at a reflection of myself, my eyes gravitate to one thing. Like most people, my gaze first turns toward my self-perceived flaws. I can take any depiction of myself and find 10 imperfections in 10 seconds, without breaking a sweat.
And yet others – a stranger, a friend, a lover – will glance at the same image to see and feel a completely different portrayal than what exists in my mind. Rarely do they see my faults first. Instead they simply see me; in a way I am incapable of.
I’ve spent a better part of the last 6 months self-reflecting on who I am and how I’ve lived these first 30 years of my life. I’ve recognized one of my favorite qualities about myself is the ability to find the good in anyone, anything, any circumstance.
But upon further examination, I realize I don’t lend myself the same latitude I afford others. We are our own harshest critic and to be honest, for much of my life that quality has aided me. Pushing myself to constantly be better has made me competitive, ambitious, and driven.
And it has also made it harder to love myself.
As I closed out the third decade of my life, I decided to have these photos taken because I thought they would be some great reminder of how far I had come. They were to be a capstone to my 20s, encompassing the strength, perseverance, and self-love I had built up on my journey.
But as soon as I got the edits, I got stuck in my own head. They became a weighted tale of how much more I needed to do. The snapshots showcased my shortcomings, physically and internally. The battle of what existed on the screen versus in my mind played for a while before I decided to change that narrative.
My dad once told me it takes 21 days for a lesson to become a habit. I don’t know how scientific that is, but it’s always worked for me, to some extent. So I tested this tried and true method to break the habit of negative self-critique.
I looked at these photos, once a day, sometimes more, and revised what I saw, where my eyes diverted, and what I felt when I scanned through them. 21 days (that I turned into 30) of finding a newness within a set of photographs, discovering something each day to love about the gallery, and in turn myself.
Today, this album is no longer an homage to my 20s but a grand welcoming to my 30s; a vision board of the potential within my future, a painted picture of my power waiting to be unleashed, an illustration of the inspiration inside waiting to be liberated, and an example of a shifting mindset, anchored in self-love and more importantly self-compassion.
The feeling I get as I flip through each time changes. Some days I instinctively see something exquisite and other days it’s a little harder, but the true treasure is the journey.
