​Here is an exercise: Tell your beloved that you need their help. Tell them to get a paper and a pen. This is a writing exercise. Ask them then to think about you, and more specifically, your body and how you look and that includes how you express yourself – your sense of style, your clothes, how you carry and present yourself.  Ask them to write ten things that the simply adore about you – no copping out and writing about your intellect, humour and all the other things that make you. Those can be a different list, a different exercise for another day. This is just about how you look.
Let them take their time. Don’t peek and let them keep that list with themselves till you do your part. You too need to think about yourself, your body, your clothes, hair, appearance, makeup and everything else about how you look. You don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror, or record yourself and play it back – this is not about looking at you in a completely factual manner. This is just a simple exercise. Now, you too write down ten things.
The catch is, make your list about ten things that you DON’T like about yourself. Things that you wish you could change or are already working on changing. Perhaps it is that nose, or those extra-huge earlobes that dance with their own momentum. Maybe it is your dorky glasses which you wish to lose and get lenses instead. Maybe it is your hair. Or lack of it. Whatever it might be. Just let it flow. We want ten, and if you find you are writing a lot, allow it to be maybe twenty, but stop at that.
Now, here comes the fun part: Take your beloved’s list about things they adore about you, and take your own list about what you don’t particularly care about yourself. Look through it, item by item, and see what’s the overlap.
Chances are that there are at least a few items common to both your lists though you both wrote it from wholly different perspectives.
Think about that. How is it that our loved ones adore things about ourselves that we may not even like? Who is weird in this perspective then? Should you recast your own assessment, or do you feel like dismissing your lover’s perspective as coloured with their love for you? And if indeed it is coloured with their love for you, what does that tell you?
Of course, you might be among the small set that has no overlap whatsoever.  You could take that as a sign of a really true self-image, or just that it has no importance.  That said, for far too many of us, our loved ones see us so much better than we see ourselves.
What if you could really see yourself the same way your loved one sees you? Would you adore more of you?  Would you be less self-critical? That would be nice, wouldn’t it.
As written for and published in the New Indian Express