6 Steps To Break The Tyranny Of Appearance

1. Check your habits

Today, in western countries, appearances are often more important than authenticity. Thus, we are more pending to comply to give the external image that is required of us than to listen to ourselves, to the point of omitting basic needs, such as sleep – every year we sleep less in the first world, where activity is imposed 24 hours a day– or eating –it is difficult to stock up on natural foods, not frozen or precooked, and have time to enjoy them calmly.

Ask yourself : Do I wake up a lot at night? Since when? How many meals a day do I share with others around a table? Have I got more headaches lately? The answers can be a guide to change habits that are harming you.

2. Detect what suits you

To free yourself from the slavery of appearance, it is essential to turn your gaze from the outside in, at least from time to time. Thus, I can hear what I am feeling and I do not give myself space to satisfy. It is important to have a meditative and contemplative time in which you do not have to do anything. It will allow us to connect with our feelings, which are the indicator of our authentic needs.

The questions we can ask ourselves to achieve this are: What suits me good? What do I want beyond what I have to do or does it look good? What do I need regardless of what others are expecting from me?

3. Are you true to yourself?

Most of the movies and series that we see on television are made in the United States, a country in which appearance is very important, as well as the fact of looking good and giving a certain image of beauty, opulence and efficiency to others.

Throughout history, the fact of maintaining the forms and being within certain canons has served to ensure the recognition of the community and to be accepted by it. Thus, there is a fear of rejection that is overcome by submitting to appearances to the point of being a slave to them. The level of pressure exerted by certain cultures is so great and sophisticated that they even manage to awaken a deep desire to dominate bodies in order to change them completely.

What do you submit to for belonging to a group? What price do you pay to be accepted?

4. Recognize the pitfalls

It is as if we are all imprisoned in a framework made up of our beliefs about how to look good. An example of this is the concept of feminine beauty. It is said that there had never been a case of anorexia in the Polynesian islands before until the 1980s television series Falcon Crest aired there. The blonde and thin women who appeared in this production were taken as the only reference of beauty by this population.

Slavery to having perfect bodies, always thin and young, is one of the most deeply rooted and important oppressions that most women in the world are suffering today and leads them to make almost inhuman and unnatural efforts.

5. Dare to choose

How hard do you try? How tired are you? The higher the level of fatigue, the more you are letting yourself be guided by appearance rather than by yourself. If you do what you want, fatigue does not appear, but satisfaction. And the point to pay attention to is the feeling that what we do gives us. It is exhausting trying to change the exterior and fight so that others always accept us as we are, so it is convenient that the work focuses above all on us.

We can decide, for example, what appearances and what rules we want to follow and which ones we don’t. The most curious thing is that, often, when one manages to give less importance to the judgments of others about who we are or what we do, they stop judging us.

Moving away from what is established or what is expected of us is a path in which we are unlearning what we have learned to free ourselves from external conditioning and thus nourish ourselves. It is the way to a full and satisfying life, rather than an empty and sterile existence.

6. Try new attitudes

Being more aware of the body, its messages and sensations, that of our brain can help us not to be so slaves of appearance. What is it that makes sense to you? It is another question that will bring you back inside. Once you’ve figured it out, do little rehearsals in which you deviate from your usual and expected behavior.