Can you love the outtakes?

I’ve been wanting to update the photos on my website for a while. My pictures are a bit outdated now and I have changed, maybe not in ways that are noticeable to the viewer, but they are to me. I hired my friend and photographer, Carol Mossa for the job. We spent a couple of hours on location and had lots of fun with this. I now have 30 or so edited images for the web and 400 total images to play with. As I looked through the non-edited photos, I found myself asking, “can you love the outtakes?” Can I be comfortable with every image in the batch regardless of my facial expression, the lighting, if my eyes were closed, etc.

I had to sit with this idea for a little bit. Could I? As I listened for the answer in stillness, I found an underlying belief that I’m not supposed to like myself in pictures. That it’s wrong to think too much of myself, or enjoy looking at yourself. A vague memory of my mother telling me to stop looking in the mirror surfaced. As an adult, and a coach, I know these are her beliefs and they don’t have to be mine. I can let them go and I do and then I revisit the question. “Can you love the outtakes, Elaine?”

As I scanned through the images, I began to realize there are no bad images. Good or bad is simply the meaning I give them, nonetheless, each is an expression of me. There is nothing to hide, nothing to be embarrassed about, because it’s all me…uniquely and divinely me. Something within me wanted me to dig deeper. Can you love the outtakes of your life? The moments I believed I’d made a bad or wrong choice? Could I love those too? Love the lessons each choice brought me. Love that it was all a necessary part of my journey to here, to this moment, to today?

Life is here for us and life happens through us, not to us. We create our lives from the inside out. I’m not saying that we will bad things to happen. I am suggesting that we can be more conscious in creating the life we want, make different choices, and free ourselves from the prison of our past.

I don’t think it’s possible to truly love and accept ourselves until we love the outtakes – whether it’s an image, an experience, or a memory. Perhaps the outtakes are more important than the perfect images? More important than the perfect parts of our lives because, in living them, we learn the most significant lessons. Loving the outtakes means letting go of judgement, shame, and perfectionism and accepting our life and ourselves for the perfect, complete beings we are.

Let me ask you, then. Can you love the outtakes? Could you look at those images of yourself that you’ve been turning away from and love them? What if you simply love what you see when you look in the mirror? Or, look back on your life? Imagine how much easier life could be if you, say, loved how you look right out of bed in the morning, or after you’ve had a good cry, or when your mouth is wide open in a photo? Think about how good it could feel to look at your life and yourself and say, “Hey, I accept you, I approve of you, I love you!” Wouldn’t it be great to have someone tell you every morning that they love you, and that someone is YOU!

It may not happen overnight. This journey of life is an ever evolving process and loving the outtakes might take some practice. So, let me ask you this instead. Are you willing, or maybe willing to be willing to love the outtakes?

From my heart to yours,

Are you willing to love your outtakes? To practice loving and accepting all of you!
Join me Saturday, February 10th for Master Your Self-Love Mindset

Photo by Daria Sukhorukova on Unsplash