“I came across my reflection in the mirror by chance: I wanted to cry,” a friend wrote to me the other day.
His message saddened me, without surprising me.
How many brilliant women, on the rise professionally, and sometimes quite at the top, have I heard this phrase uttered.
How many talented friends have written it to me – when it wasn't me, let's be honest, who sent this SMS… My job leads me to meet exceptional and often admirable women every day.
Who lead intense professional and personal lives simultaneously.
Complete the work of three people in one week.
Certainly, fatigue must do its work, marking their faces.
But when I look at them, I don't see it.
I find these women magnificent.
Demanding, energy, intelligence in their way of combining roles and existences.
How do they still find time to be so elegant?
“You are not objective” they object when I compliment them.
“I look like a big horse,” says one.
“My face collapses beneath my wrinkles,” adds the other, when she does not conclude: “I am a call for the syringe.”
To discover
The keys to supporting women in their working lives
Work or wrinkles, should you choose?
robertprzybysz / Getty Images/iStockphoto
There are those who find themselves too much.
And the majority, who do not find themselves enough.
In the middle, float the words “dull”, “invisible”, like so many regrets drowned in cold water: “the one I was no longer exists”, one even said to me.
Obviously, as much more serious things are happening in the world, and we are not saving lives either, the discussion takes on the tone of laughter.
We chase away bad suffixes with the wave of the hand.
But still.
How do women – me first – who have learned so much over the last ten years, build careers and families with all that this involves working on themselves, expanding their skills, the ability to manage complexity… How do these women “ superlatives” do they end up feeling very small when it comes to talking about their physique?
“We missed the gland option”
Is it the habit of demands, which has become a driving force, and which has spread to all areas of life?
The obsession with perfection?
The invisible thread of self-criticism, which weaves its web, like an inflexible inner judge?
Certainly.
Above all, I think that there is in every successful woman, especially when she has followed an intellectually demanding path, the image of the former top of the class, this young girl who is often different, who follows her mentally like a burden.
You have to have spent a lot of time in your books, and even today, many more hours behind your computer, than at the hairdresser or manicurist – not to mention the booths at Le Bon Marché – to understand what I mean.
“We missed the gland option, that’s what is written on our faces,” summarizes a friend.
She's not necessarily wrong.
Herself, since when has she not had a coffee on the terrace at 4 p.m.?
How long has it been since she tried on a dress?
The Internet is practical: buying online allows you to dream, rather than looking at yourself in a mirror.
Also read: How to invest your money well to increase your income and gain freedom?
One day, after a lovely message she sent me thanking me for a dinner, and following my derogatory response, one of my friends got really angry.
Angry, she was, to see my inability to see, she wrote to me, who I had become.
Did I just let it hatch, exist?
“When will you leave this precious friend alone?”
she told me.
His question disarmed me.
When I read it, I told myself that she was right.
That I had wasted enough time and energy with these old reflexes.
That, if I had managed to become as friends with myself, as confident with my abilities, I could well also be so with my physique.
I write it for all of you who read me: our characters, our temperaments, our health, have been our most precious strengths in our lives.
It is now time to also consider ourselves a friend of our appearance.
Love yourself better to look at the world better Ponomariova_Maria / Getty Images
My diagnosis:
If you too feel like the ugly duckling who hasn't exactly become a swan, you can:
– Reread Montaigne
, who encourages us to respect “
the friendship that everyone owes to each other
”.
– Read the latest work by the famous psychiatrist Christophe André
“Esteem yourself and forget yourself”, Ed. Odile Jacob (everything is said).
Or “how self-esteem can become a kind of breathing of our spirit.
A breath, that is to say a spontaneous, natural, invigorating dimension.
And which we don’t think about at all times.”
Not the result of a fight against oneself but the breath of life, in a way.
- Save
moments in your schedule
, as advised by Judith Levy (Oh my Cream) and Justine Ryst (YouTube France) during the Madame Figaro business masterclass on time management.
Finding yourself ugly is often a symptom of fatigue or a lack of time for yourself.
At a certain position level, setting aside two hours per week noted in the diary, just for you, becomes essential to perform better.
– Give yourself a gift
when you succeed in something that cost you time and energy.
A promotion, a difficult project: presto, a bag.
It's a way to fill the tank.
And that’s all the harm you would wish on a friend, right?
– Listen to your caring friends
when they tell you that they find you beautiful.
This is not necessarily hypocritical or compassionate.
But often true.
Knowing how to hear it should be a game-changer...
To meditate between now and the next letter:
“Loving yourself is the beginning of a love story that will last a lifetime,” Oscar Wilde.
“You must learn to love yourself, this is my doctrine, with a whole and healthy love, in order to remain fixed in yourself instead of wandering in all directions.
», Frederick Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
.
“The world will see you the same way you see yourself, and will treat you the same way you treat yourself.”, Beyoncé.