Critical Me

Self-Esteem: Is ignorance bliss?

Anyone that knows me well, can attest to the fact that I am critical. The person that I am most critical of is myself. In fact I am quite forgiving of the faults of others that I love. So lets delve further into this self inflicted, self directed critic.

See the picture above of the beautiful Victoria's Secret model. That is my goal physically. So to me physically, if I don't look that way the critical me comes out. I am aware that I am easy on the eyes and in fact quite physically blessed. However, I feel this constant internal pressure to be as physically perfect as possible.

In a recent conversation with my sounding board husband, (aka. Mr. Critical Pants)  I inquired into our mutual idea of what we want to look like, and how it affects our self-esteem. We both agreed that until the self imposed internal goal of what we want to look like is achieved that it does affect one's self esteem. (The weird thing here, we both love each other physically to pieces faults and all)...this is all self imposed.

My next question; how can someone lacking a great deal physically, socially, intellectually etc. have incredibly high self esteem? The answer; they probably don't care about those things and just love themselves because. So is ignorance bliss? Is it better to just accept what we have and not care, or should we continue to be critical of ourselves? Please don't misunderstand me here, by critical I mean paying attention to both the good and bad qualities and always striving to improve.

Is it so wrong to expect that you look as good as you possibly can? To push yourself to work towards achieving that goal? I really don't think so.

However, what I do think is more important is to make sure that the stuff inside the physical exterior is as perfect as possible as well...and that this part needs equal if not more attention!