I googled “How to cultivate inner beauty” to see what kind of resources are already available for us. I found one post that said that in order to cultivate inner beauty you should make an “I love me list”; a list of why you love yourself. That made me smile alright!
So I decided to go through some of the main ingredients for inner beauty in women. There are many more that could be added to the list – like for example – compassion etc, but I felt that it was already strongly implied in many of the points.
I’m not very good with these introductions, so let’s start!
Calmness
Calmness can be developed through discipline. This means discipline through following the daily regime, but also the discipline that allows you to make wise choices, to go towards the things that serve you and to step away from the things that do not. By following the daily regime and waking up before the sun rises, you can ease into your day prepared and collected, as opposed to waking up with just 1 hour to get you and your family ready for the day.
Calmness can also be developed through meditation and a belief in God.
By practicing the art of self-inquiry we can learn how to respond to situations without the instant turbulent emotional reaction that often brings us away from calmness. Self-inquiry simply means asking yourself questions, to think before speaking and before acting, to practice the art of foresight. Try to bring more reflection into your day. Ask yourself before speaking if what you want to say will add value to those who hear it. If you are upset with something, take the time to figure out what exactly has upset you and what it would take for you to feel better on a physical level, an emotional level and on a soul-level. Make sure you can answer these questions before you talk about it, or do anything about it. Take the time to understand your life and what it is showing you. When you start to believe that you can trust your ability to understand your own life, you will feel calmer.
To cultivate calmness, you must choose to live in peace. You must create a peaceful environment to live in, and surround yourself with harmony. You can teach your children to be calm, and how to find joy in calmness.
Love
Most people believe that in order to cultivate love for life and love for other people, you need to first love yourself. That means you need to make your “I love me” list. I don’t agree with this. Instead, I believe that if you want to experience love for yourself, you need to first love other people, you need to first cultivate a love for life. Focus on that first. Learn how to love other people and love life. Out of this, a healthy, non-egocentric and humble love for yourself will slowly emerge. This type of love of self is healthy. Whereas if you do it the other way around, where you teach yourself to love yourself before you love other people, you will never be able to truly love other people. And the love of self that you create is contrived and conceited.
Kindness
Kindness comes from genuinely wishing other people happiness. When you start to wish good for other people, you will naturally act in a kind way towards them. When you hear about someone’s achievement, instead of brushing it off with a quick “that’s great” because it doesn’t directly apply to you, take a moment to really consider what this accomplishment could mean to that person. Wish them well in it.
Other things you can do to become a kinder person is to stop discussing another persons negative qualities, and instead focus on their positive ones. You must also try very hard to do the right and kind thing and help people whenever you can by performing acts of charity. But Charity isn’t confined to only monetary donations – there are many other things you can donate to someone. You can donate a smile, donate your time, donate food. Check on this post on the different ways to be charitable.
Humility
Humility comes out of first doing a honest self-evaluation of yourself and understanding that you do have many flaws and imperfections – in-fact, you have so many that discussing the imperfections of another should make you feel really silly. Humility is cultivated through living a life of service – to dedicate your life to helping other people and finding joy in that.
Optimism and Sweetness
Optimism creates a lightness of spirit. A light spirit is a sweet spirit to be around. You can cultivate these qualities by looking for the good qualities of others and the sweetness in life.
This doesn’t mean you have to be sickeningly positive and naïve all the time. If you notice, the problem with always putting a positive spin on things is that most people tend to get annoyed with you. But the thing is, they usually get annoyed by your “positivity” and “naivety” when they sense it is not sincere and genuine. In order to develop sincere and genuine optimism and sweetness, you must develop a optimistic and sweet way of thinking and being – rather than a sweet way of speaking. Let your thoughts dwell in light and sweet places. Let your actions be aligned with that. Let your actions be positive and influenced by positive influences. When a person can do this, their words will naturally be sweet (in an non-annoying way).
Gentleness and Grace
Gracefulness is cultivated through gentleness. Grace is a form of strength that is directed inwards not outwardly. It is never overpowering. Learn to be gentle and overtime you will learn to be graceful. Gentleness is a culmination of gentle thoughts, gentle words and gentle actions. Find ways to calm down. It is difficult to be gentle when you are not calm.
Faith and a Conscience
We need to develop faith in goodness, faith in love, faith in our families, faith in our friends. A person who possess faith also has a sense of conscience – a deep inner compass that will always lead them towards spreading goodness, and moving away from darkness.
Caring
Those with strong inner beauty are caring people. They care about people. They care about their environment. They take care of everything. They see it as their responsibility. We should try find ways to bring happiness into someone’s life, how to make someone’s life easier, or better, or have more value. We should learn how to take care of both the sick, and the healthy, the young and the elderly. We need to study how to make sure everyone we meet in our life is cared for in a physical, emotional and spiritual level. People should always feel safe and secure around you.
Patience
Those with strong inner beauty are patient in the ways that matter. They are patient about the bad qualities of other people. They give them time to change on their own. They do not over react in regards to them. They are patient with their own flaws, knowing that as long as they are dedicated to their path of self-development, then things can only progress slowly. They are also patient with life and the things that their life is showing them.
Contentment
Patience and contentment come hand in hand. Patience without contentment still implies some form of straining. People with strong inner beauty have a placid contentment towards life. They are not in a rush for things to change, get better, and be different. Contentment comes from the wisdom to accept things as they are and instead focusing on the duties that are required of you right now while still harboring a positive optimism for the future.
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Whew, I think I am long over due for an inner-beauty-make-over! There are so many areas I need to improve.
Thank you for reading!
m
(By the way, snakes)
