What if I told you that you could change the image you see in the mirror without a single application of the newest beauty product or without a single dose of the most recently released line of supplements?

Remember the quote that most of us have heard hundreds of times in our lives…“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

And who is the beholder when your reflection stares back at you in the mirror? It’s you! You are the beholder! Your eyes are the judge.

In my career, I have sat across from individuals of, quite literally, all sizes, height, skin tone, hair color, and complexion. They have been tall, small, curvy, average and stick straight. Their hair has been blonde, brown, black, red, grey or some other manufactured color that is not in anyone’s genetic phenotype. Some have had no hair at all. They’ve had green eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes or some combination of the four.

Over and over and over again, they doubt their beauty.

The number of heart-breaking reasons could easily fill a thousand pages. Sometimes the interpretation of their beauty was delivered through a well-intending adult in their life. Sometimes the interpretation is delivered through their own repetitive act of comparing them self to some photoshopped, filtered, or airbrushed image posed on a screen. Sometimes the interpretation was delivered directly through trauma…through someone who intended to harm them.

The list makes me weep. While the cause may be unique, the impact is similar…distorted eyes for the “beholders”.

Oh and trust me, dear ones, my eyes are distorted as well.

What if today, we determined that we would see through eyes of kindness, through eyes that love and search for value? What if today, we agreed to look at ourself until we recognized our beauty? What if today, instead of judging our worth based on wrinkles, scars, hairs out-of-place, or against images of what we think we are supposed to be, we choose to not judge ourself at all? What if we choose to accept that our beauty is not something that is coming once we enhance our appearance, meet some goal, or purchase some product, but that it already exists? Truly…right now…we’d believe that it is already in existence.

It doesn’t take a dime, but it does take courage and it does take compassion to admit that your beholder’s eyes are wrong. Let’s do it together. Today. Let’s adjust our view, take on new eyes and look deep until we see our beauty.