When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Can you see the beauty within you – and own it in every cell of your body?

Beauty means different things to different people. Physically, it’s often defined as something that’s pleasing, attractive. For me, beauty is a radiance, a presence, a serenity, a quiet confidence and it comes from being real. The power of beauty is that it touches the soul.

True beauty comes from within – it’s the light within us. How can we access that if we’ve lived a life of pain – and feel stuck – perhaps feel hard-done by, maybe even ugly?

Often we’re challenged to see our self as beautiful if we feel we don’t have anything contribute, if we’re unable to see our value. An event can happen that causes us to feel like a failure; we lose our sense of identity, our role in life. For example, as a woman, if we find that we’re unable to have children, we lose our role as a nurturer, and can wonder ‘what’s wrong with me?’ As a man, we can feel like a failure when we don’t meet family expectations, our career is in a tailspin, our parenting is a misery, or, we lose our passion for life.

When we feel unattractive inside, often what then happens is we reject our self in order to avoid being rejected by others. We look to control life; we encase our self in order to feel safe. We control so much we forget who we are, and our heart can become hard. Consequently, we may separate from people. We may adopt the habit of competing, looking to prove our worth, so that people accept us – all because we don’t feel beautiful enough to accept our self.

All it takes to see yourself as beautiful is a willingness to accept yourself as you are, with all your strengths and imperfections, and feel it in your heart. When we open our heart, we can let go of our pain and tap into our Essential Nature.

When we decide to make a new start in life, we have an opportunity to choose how we see our self and the world around us. D’you choose to see through the eyes of love, or, fear? Love is who we are at heart. We are already the essence of beauty, we simply need to get past our fear of seeing who we are.

How can you be who you are and blossom?