I’m now three days into my ’30 days of self-love’ challenge; and no, it’s not the kind of self-love that needs an “Adults Only” rating. I am working my way through an initiative of blogger Tina, who inspired her followers and readers to take a month-long trip with her in September 2010. Each day she offered them a different theme to ponder. Belatedly it’s my turn. Today’s theme is: intrinsic beauty.

How do you define beauty? When you consider someone beautiful does the sole focus lie in her outward appearance? When you look at yourself in the mirror, can you look past that barrier of our body called the skin and see beauty? According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary beauty is: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.

No physical manifestation of those inner qualities of beauty need to exist. We simply need to adapt this paradigm shift of defining beauty by the inside versus the outside. Intrinsic beauty fits the true definition of beauty and flatters more than a miracle bra. When we tap into our intrinsic beauty and allow it to showcase who we are, nothing will succeed at diminishing our sparkle. Intrinsic beauty shines through. See your body as a reflection of your inner qualities. There is power…and beauty…in that.

 Take a few moments to think how you showcase intrinsic beauty. What positive qualities describe you. Search deep. Through the day consider these qualities. How do they showcase in your life and make you beautiful?

I believe my intrinsic beauty lies in my compassion and consideration for others. I ‘believe’ I have the ability to understand and empathise with those I come in contact with. In my ‘what I’m confident about’ post, I said that I believed I was emotionally intelligent and had to ability to read and sense others’ feelings. I’m also prone to take on their feelings. I’m emotional. I cry during television commercials and TV shows, hell, I sometimes even cry during music videos.

I also tend to be overly considerate towards others, often putting them before myself – when I need not. People sometimes view this as a generousity of spirit, which I suspect it isn’t but rather a willingness to please… (I’m not that virtuous) but they don’t need to know that! But, although I tend to be self-centred I have a sense of right and wrong that doesn’t allow me to screw over others too badly.

I’ve inherited these traits from my parents – with both the nature AND nurture arguments coming into play. My mother is a VERY nice person. She does a lot of stuff for other people. She takes old ladies to church and ferries them to appointments and the like. She sends people sweet cards when they are down and regularly makes dutiful calls the rest of us avoid. My father is an emotional person, like me. He’s always been concerned about being a burden on others and instilled in me the need to be considerate. When I was young, he would always make me walk on the inside of the footpath, lest a car veer off the road. He would put money in others’ parking meters if they’d expired. He called people by their titles and called his (often younger) bosses ‘Mr’.

Now there’s no way I’d be calling my bosses Mr or Mrs or Doctor or Judge (I’m beyond informal) but I do like the fact that I think about the effect my beliefs, attitude, words and behaviour have on others.