Aesthetically Balanced. Elle Edwards, FNP-C

a worksheet that I hope you find helpful if you are on the fence with your aesthetic journey. Being truthful and transparent to yourself is the only way you will get truthful and transparent answers back, and it is the only practice you will ever have in how your communications with others, and others with you, would be healthiest. Now that doesn't mean everybody should know your business, and I feel very much so the opposite. What it does mean, is that once you own your truth and decisions, and stand in it and are confident in it no one else will ever be able to sway you from it and you will never be ashamed of a decision you make moving forward especially in regard to how others perceive it.

       That Self Love Glow

      If we chose to love ourselves with the same intensity that we choose to worry about someone else loving us, we would all be in such a better place. Why is it that we look for outside sources to handle, fix or fill voids in an internal space that we only share with ourselves? That is our power. Why do we so freely give it away? And does it ever really stick? I have always been self-conscious of my eyes. I have very large eyes, I was teased a lot growing up about my eyes, and I've never really been 100% comfortable with the way they look. As an adult, I probably have a handful of people who will comment and say lovely things about my eyes on a weekly to monthly basis. It does feel good in the moment, it even has boosted my confidence and the very minimal times I wear makeup, I do try to play them up. But at the end of the day when my makeup is washed off, when my hair is up and I'm in my pajamas looking at no one but myself, do I like them any more than I did before all of the complements? Not really.

      The important thing is I can appreciate the aspects I see within them. I am grateful that I share the same eyes as my dad, and the same color as my kids. I am blessed with excellent eyesight and healthy eyes in general. And the few times I do dress up for date nights I do love the way they look in makeup.

       You don't have to love absolutely everything about you. None of us ever will, and that is perfectly okay! But getting to a place where you can still feel confident and appreciate your parts for all that they are is the ultimate goal. The moment you realize you don't need complements, (though they are nice to hear), I bet you won’t feel the need to fix everything. When you can do absolutely nothing and look in the mirror and find appreciation and beauty and completeness. Only then will you realize that truly none of that comes from external alone. And at that time, if you choose to explore enhancing the things you love, tweaking things here and there or just preventatively, please do so!

      It is a constant balance in the life of internal and external. If you eat nothing but unhealthy food it will catch up to you by ways of weight gain, skin disorders, along with internal struggles. If you cut on yourself or even pick at blemishes on your face you run the risk of infections internally, not just scars on the outside. There is a reaction for every action whether it be internal or external. The difference is, the external ones can be more easily healed, covered, altered, or justified. The internal ones take more time, self-realization, devotion, care, and concern. With that being said, the internal battles you win will be the ones the true glow up and breakthroughs come from. They will be the ones that transform you, that get people to notice your presence when you enter the room. Sure, your looks may get a glance and adoration, but your soul will be what gets the questions, the respect, and the loyalty. Invest in that. The external will be nothing more than a bonus.

      My hope is that we can all get to a place where we realize we're talking about one whole being and not two separate entities. That is when, and only when, we can make a decision. It will at that point, be a decision that benefits that very whole and that is made in respects to it. In a world that is made to take away our self-love, my hope and want for each of you is that we use that to fuel a fire within us that is so powerful and so overwhelming that it sprouts a level of self-love that is unconditional, unshaken, and a force to be reckoned with. Each one of us is capable of it and was made to embody it, we just need to find where that went, what that looks like for us individually and why we haven’t yet.

       Your Gut Check - Aesthetic Version

       When did you FIRST start to think about doing this?

       What made you first think about it?

       Has anything influenced this decision?

       What would happen if you did not get this procedure?

       What do you feel you would gain by getting it and does that answer have to do with you or someone else?

       Is this attainable and maintainable?

       At the end of this, would this solve the first thought mention, or is it possibly deeper than that?

      Stop breaking yourself into bite sized pieces to feed people.

      Let them eat the whole cake

      -unknown