Body Image Stress—Fearful Of Aging?
By Dr. Margaret Paul. Posted on .
I received the following email from a young man who had read one of my articles:
"One topic that I feel that I haven't seen covered much is the issue of body-image related stress, anxiety and insecurity, and how to fight it. We all age. Personally, I am 27 years old, and rapidly going from a handsome full-headed young man to a completely bald individual in a very looks-dependent society. This process has been devastating to my mental well being in the last 3 years. However much I tell myself that I am in control of how I feel about myself, I cannot rid myself of the fear of never finding the right woman because of a lack of initial attraction on their part."
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Here is my answer to him:
There are two ways that we can define our worth: externally or internally. As long as your worth is defined by your looks or your performance, aging will create stress. Telling yourself that you are in control of how you feel about yourself is not going to change the fact that you are defining your worth externally.
Many women are going to be more attracted to you regarding your ENERGY than your looks. A woman who is put off by baldness is a woman who is also defining herself externally - likely by how her boyfriend looks. And as long as you are not defining your worth by inner qualities, such as kindness, caring, compassion, creativity, sense of humor, integrity, reliability and so on, you may run into women who will reject you due to being bald.
Everything changes energetically when you define worth by your internal, intrinsic qualities. It is this that creates the sense of personal power along with the gentleness that many women love and are very attracted to.
Do you really want a woman who cares more about how much hair you have on your head than who you are? If this woman bases her attraction to you on your looks, what happens as you age even more?
The challenge here is to learn to define your own worth, which cannot happen through your programmed mind. Your left-brain ego wounded mind has been deeply programmed to define worth in terms of looks and performance.
Defining your Worth Internally
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In order to see and value who you really are, separate from your looks and performance, you need to be able to see yourself from a place of truth. Your programmed ego mind is not able to access truth, so telling yourself from this place, your wounded self, that you are in control of how you feel about yourself isn't going to make you feel any better at all.
However, when you open to learning about who you REALLY are, and you ask your spiritual Guidance - whatever this is for you (your higher self, higher power, God/Goddess, Spirit, Universal truth, the Light, and so on) - you can begin to access the truth of your soul essence, the spark of the Divine that is within you. It is only through the eyes of love and truth that you can heal the fear of your wounded self that you will never find the right woman because of a lack of initial attraction on her part.
