Beauty and I have had a relationship history that looks a little like a torrid love affair from a romance novel. There have been times when I couldn’t live without it and felt nearly consumed by my desire for it. And there have been other times when I couldn’t have cared less and wanted nothing to do with it.

Whether I was in or out of love with beauty, my relationship with it has always been passionate.

But when I looked more closely at this relationship, I realized that I was constantly placing myself in one of two places. I was either chasing beauty, believing I didn’t have it and that I had to pursue it to get it. Or, I was pushing beauty away, telling myself that it wasn’t important, it didn’t matter, and that only the shallow, vain and selfish gave it any attention.

Truth be told, neither place felt very good to me.

It’s taken me years and many poignant moments to realize that beauty isn’t something I have to pull toward me or push away. Beauty simply is. Beauty is something I am. It’s not separate from me, nor is it something elusive or unique to a select few.

Beauty is everywhere. And as such, it is a tremendous gift inside of you and all around you that you can all choose to receive and share at any time.

Like prosperity, wealth and abundance, I think it’s easy to believe that beauty is something that you don’t have, that it’s something that you have to work hard for and earn, or that it has to constantly meet external approval to be truly beautiful. This line of thinking, in essence, clings to the belief that beauty is something that is outside of you.

If you believe beauty is outside of you, and that you have to do or be something in order to possess it, it’s only natural to turn to striving, grasping and chasing it. But in the process of chasing it, you also begin to change yourself to conform to someone else’s definition of what beauty is.

In my experience, whenever I chase something, it runs away from me. And when I change myself to please someone else, it never turns out well. This is where I believe this conversation about beauty can get really tricky for women.

When I became tired of pursuing beauty, I started to push it away. Anyone who has tried to change themselves over and over again to please someone or “get” something in return will tell you that it’s a completely exhausting way to live. I hit my limit with this, and so I started to tell myself a different story.

I started to believe that my exhaustive pursuit of beauty was a sign that beauty was frivolous and unimportant. I told myself that beauty, and the pursuit of it, was only for the shallow-minded. I pushed my desire for beauty way down deep inside, took a holier than thou stance and told myself to take the “higher road” and focus on internal beauty because that’s where “true” beauty lives.

And this is where this conversation with beauty can sometimes really twisted. When you place beauty outside of yourself and then spend a lot of time, energy, and money pursing what you think you don’t have, you push it further away from yourself and become tired and resentful of it.

The natural response is to then push it away because it feels false and repulsive to your “more evolved” sensibilities. Instead of chasing it, you push it away and claim you’re “above it” and want nothing more to do with it. And so, what you at one point desperately desired is now even further away.

This push and pull of beauty is quite confusing!

What might be possible if you stopped chasing and pursuing beauty, and allowed it to find and follow you?

What if you believed that beauty is everywhere, and that instead of searching for it you only have to adjust your eyes to see it where it has always been?

What if you could instead recognize that feeling this passionate about beauty is really a sign that it is important to you instead of something you need to abhor and reject?

What could happen if you directed your attention and energy away from what and where you believe beauty is and instead allowed yourself to receive it and be it?

As long as you believe beauty is something you don’t currently possess, it will continue to elude you. And as long as you push beauty away, your secret desire for it will haunt you. I believe it’s time to truly own and embody your desires and your unique flavor of beauty as a divine representation of what makes you who you are; of what makes you beautiful.

I believe it’s time to stop playing tug of war with beauty and to instead allow it to come through you as a powerful expression of your personal contribution to the world. As women, one of our most powerful gifts is to express and share our unique beauty with others. So let’s start sharing who and what we really are instead of distracting ourselves with false notions of who we have to be or what we have to do or have before we can begin.

It’s time ladies. It’s time to own your beauty. You have always had it, and you need look no further to find it.

Leave me a comment below and share with me how you are currently relating to beauty. Are you pulling it toward you? Are you pushing it away? And what has gotten in the way of you really owning your beauty and sharing it unapologetically and completely authentically with the world?

I can’t wait to continue this conversation with you… xx