I still remember the moment I was asked the question that changed the way I lived, forever. That most important of all questions wasn’t asking me to get married or have a baby or even accept a job promotion. And it certainly wasn’t asking how old I was or how much I weighed that day.
The funny thing is that question was asked of me at the height of my ‘physical prowess’. I was at the peak of my youth and was modeling all over the world. To an outsider it could look like I was ‘sitting pretty’. And yet I lived mostly in a state of dissatisfaction with myself and my looks, always comparing with the other models around me.
The question I was asked and for which I will be forever grateful was, “Why don’t you worry less about being perfect and more about being happy?” For some reason, in the midst of all my fretting about what wasn’t ‘just right’ with me, those words shot right through to my core. I was able to hear them and I am so, so glad I did.
In a heartbeat I ‘got it’ and it stopped me in my tracks. What is the real goal here? To throw myself on an endless treadmill where at times I may inch a little closer to the unattainable goal of ‘perfection’…and if so, to prove what and to whom?
Or would I be better served to seek happiness? Or more precisely, to welcome and allow it…
From that moment I became free. Free to live life for myself rather than to appease some nameless inner critic lurking in the shadows of comparison. I became free to get to know me; the real me, the eternal, changeless me.
I got to laugh more and have more fun; to notice and enjoy the gifts Life brought to me every day. And—big time benefit—I got to stop looking outside for acceptance and validation.
It was then that I began to live a model life.
To Your Best Life,
Kim
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