Do you spend a lot of time preserving a body you’re not even enjoying living in? Do you find yourself obsessing over your health or taking good care of your body when all the while you don’t even really like your life? And deep down you know it would actually be a blessing if it all fell apart? If so, then it’s time to start putting joy over self-preservation.
If you don’t make it a priority to seek out joy first, you will never be happy – no matter how much time you spend in front of the mirror or at the gym. Life isn’t about self-preservation, it’s about self-expression. It’s about finding out who you are so you can pursue the things you love. Passion for life is what brings meaning and fulfillment to our lives, not having the right career, relationship, or figure. So if you’re putting undue pressure on yourself to become something because you think it will make you happy, you’re missing the point.
The point is that we are in control of feeling happy; feelings of happiness do not take any effort to find or receive, they’re always accessible from within us. They’re generated by our own minds deciding that we want to feel a certain way. Once you realize that, you can stop looking for happiness outside of yourself and start creating a life you actually want to live.
Back to self-preservation: if this activity occupies more of your time than self-expression, you risk losing your creativity – the natural gifts you were born to share with this world. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” I believe that the longer we stay out of touch with our unique forms of expression, the harder it is to make our way back to them and to start putting them into action. As far as our physical bodies are concerned, if we don’t start using them to go do the things we love to do, sooner or later we will not be able to do those things anymore. So who cares how you look, go make time for yourself. If you do what makes you happy, you’ll look more youthful by the day, because your energy and life force will reflect the efforts you’re taking to care for yourself and honor your needs. This means that your soul will be smiling, your inner light will be shinning, and your heart will be happy. How can you not be beautiful in such a state?