Just the other night I was telling a friend of mine about a book written by two Nashville-based authors, husband and wife team Michael and Ruthie Dean. The name of the book is Real Men Don't Text (I love that title!). The book is about the importance of real face-to-face dating relationships and the detriments of just settling for a relationship with a gadget, including least-amount-of-effort ambiguous texts from someone hiding behind a smartphone.
One of the sections in the book caught my eye because it spoke directly to what I see in a lot of my prospective female clients who are on the fence about hiring a personal shopper. So many women fall for cultural lies about what beauty actually is (truth: it's a heart thing, not a physical thing!), and in turn lose confidence in themselves. They think just because they don't meet the media's standards of beauty, they can't feel beautiful, and if they don't feel beautiful, they don't deserve to look beautiful, which perpetuates a whole cycle of negative thinking. Check out these two Real Men Don't Text excerpts from both the male and the female perspective:
I recently went to visit a longtime friend. When she trudged toward me at the airport, I knew something was awry. She was wearing sweatpants and no makeup; her confidence had vanished. After a weekend together, she, near tears, told me how terribly ugly she believed she had become. She couldn't bring herself to go shopping or wear makeup, because she "didn't deserve it." Because of some stressors in her life, she had begun to believe that she was worthless. It wasn't about makeup; it was about her heart.From Michael:
I believe it's important to act in direct opposition to the lies we hear, so I suggested shopping. She wasn't too keen on the idea and listed excuses, but I can be pretty convincing. "Just one hour," I told her, promising to be by her side the whole time. You may be rolling your eyes, thinking shopping is never the answer. But stay with me. In one triumphant afternoon, we went to the mall and my dear friend, a tad begrudgingly, bought new clothes and got a makeover. And suddenly, her whole countenance changed. She walked out of the salon giggling and skipping like a child. It wasn't that the makeup or the new clothes suddenly made her beautiful - it was that now she actually felt beautiful. She believed she was beautiful. I told her, "I want you to look at yourself every day in the mirror and declare, 'I am beautiful,' whether you believe it or not." She told me I was a weirdo, but a week later she called and told me she'd done it. I knew over time she'd see a beautiful woman in the mirror instead of seeing the ugly valueless woman the world had convinced her she was...It honestly breaks my heart to hear that many women feel they will never compare, so they hide in safe little worlds of "not caring" or perhaps addiction to numb their desires. How our culture has lied to you!
The reason it was important for Ruthie's friend to go shopping and put on makeup when she felt terrible about herself was because it was a tangible way of "walking out" the truth...Ruthie tells me that new clothes can make all the difference. So I want to encourage you to treat yourself to a shopping trip every once in a while. It doesn't have to be a $200 spend, just something new to make you feel beautiful and confident...You deserve it.Do you feel the media and culture is lying about what true beauty is? If so, are you ready to act in direct opposition to those lies?
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