I have a confession, for the longest time I have misunderstood exactly what self worth, self care, self love, self esteem, and self image really was. I’m a Star Wars nerd and I saw a recent interview with Mellody Hobson, a beautiful goddess who is has broken through numerous professional limits and is married to George Lucas and she shared that the reason that George Lucas made Yoda speak backwards in the Star Wars films is because he wanted the children to actually listen to what he says, he knew if Yoda spoke regularly it would bore the kids and he wanted the children to actually listen and to view him as a wise sage and so he made him speak backward (brilliant right).
It’s almost like I’m dyslexic because when I read “self image”, “self love”, “self esteem” I didn’t realize that the correct way is to read the word in reverse and it’s only then that you’ll get the true meaning.
The love of self = self love.
How much you value yourself = self value.
How much you think you’re worth = self worth.
How much do esteem who you are as person in mind, body, and soul = self esteem.
And how do you see yourself in your head = self image.
I think that all the words above have become such gigantic marketing terms that I almost don’t realize that in a way it’s Yoda speaking backward to you.
I had no idea of how to change my self image or really how important self image is until I enrolled in Tonya Leigh’s School of Self Image Program (SOSI) and she talks about reinventing yourself as building a house.
Tonya teaches us that our self image is our self portrait. Do you remember the gigantic portraits that houses from the 1600’s used to have?
Well throughout life we all are drawing our self portrait and Tonya mentioning that our self image being our “self portrait” (and me realizing what self image actually is) drew me back to the art classes that I took as a child where I was given the task to draw my own portait.
I remember one of the assignments was given is that we were given empty clementine crates and we were asked to draw our portrait inside of the bottom of the crate with the box itself being our frame. (I remember the art instructor being worried because made the slats that ran on top of the crate into prison bars and painted myself like I was in jail, good cause to worry I guess).
Fast forward to around 16 or so when I was in a pre-college art program and I the self portrait that I drew of myself makes me want to cry (and now I can’t even draw a thing anymore it’s so sad!) However the portrait that I drew of myself was of a disfigured woman.
So in my current course the moment that I heard Tonya say “Your self image is your self portrait.” I took a pause…and I realized that I could draw a new portrait!
I asked my mind (no pencil or charcoal needed) what would my portrait be and even now I shudder when I see it. But then at the same time I realized that if I didn’t like the picture – I could just “draw” aka create a new one! After all who wouldn’t want a self portait of themselves covered in diamonds or dipped in shimmer?
In my head I painted a gorgeous picture of myself in a secret waterfall cove with flowers tucked into my hair and delicately adorned all over my body, my arms are up in the sign of “Victory”, with the lush peaceful paradise all around of me.
How about you gorgeous? What portrait would you have of yourself?
For me, I even took it a step deeper and I asked myself what is the self image that I have of myself as webcam model. And this is the interesting part, I thought it was ugly and disgusting but then I realize that I was looking at the wrapping that the world had wrapped the picture in and not the picture itself. When I took off the ugly wrapping I discovered a gorgeous, beautiful woman who had the courage to believe in herself. This is super private to share but I’m sharing it here because I think sometimes it’s the wrapping that’s messed up – not ourselves, and our picture is wrapped up in wrapping that we ourselves haven’t even put on but the world did and sometimes we need to look and adjust the brushstrokes of our painting and did our brushes into a new paint color so that we can actually draw the picture of the woman that really there.