We all have those days when we just don’t feel attractive. And trying to meet society’s expectations of beauty can be even more frustrating – your clothes are from last season, your hair doesn’t look right, you gained 10 pounds over winter. You start thinking, “Is this why I’m still single?” Let me just stop you right there. Resist these overwhelming feelings. Don’t allow social demands to cause you to question your self-worth.
As it turns out, your physical appearance is not what makes you attractive to other people. What matters the most is who you are on the inside.
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” – Kahlil Gibran
Your physical appearance is not likely to cause attraction between you and the person you’re dating. Contrary to what we are conditioned to believe, your emotional expressions are what other people find attractive. When we’re dating new people, we want to build a relationship with somebody who shares our thoughts and morals. We want to find somebody that we can understand…
A psychology study has backed this up. A professor of Social and Affective Neuroscience at the University of Lubeck in Germany, Silke Anders, conducted an experiment by having volunteers watch videos of women expressing either sadness or fear. The volunteers then rated the videos. The results indicated a positive correlation between how well the volunteers understood the woman’s feelings and how attractive they found her. The findings went beyond the volunteers’ ratings. The area of their brains responsible for the feeling of attraction were also more active when watching the women that they could understand.
Our desire to have a relationship with somebody we can understand is built into our psychology. In fact, the very attraction between two people is dependent on whether or not we share a common language. Being able to understand somebody we are dating means that we can trust them as our partner.
“I found I was more confident when I stopped trying to be someone else’s definition of beautiful and started being my own.” –Remington Miller
All of this worrying about how attractive we are on the outside can really bring us down, giving us insecurities and even social anxiety. We lose our confidence when we start worrying about how other will see us. And with our confidence goes our happiness.
So what’s the answer? It’s in your communication with the rest of the world. Show them that you don’t care what you think. That’s right, stop caring and stop thinking. Thinking too much before you do something (like going out for the night) only causes you a ton of social anxiety. When you stop thinking, you get rid of that anxiety. If you’re in the dating world and get rejected, don’t think about it. Let it roll right off your shoulders; don’t feel angry and don’t feel hurt. Because you don’t care.[1]
When you stop caring, you’ll be more likely to be proactive in life, both in the professional and personal realm. And you’ll start to realize something with this new attitude. It gives you social confidence. As long as you focus on your life with confidence, people will be attracted to you.
The psychology of attraction says that it doesn’t matter how you look. So stop worrying about getting the right shade of lipstick, going out with a bad hairdo, and putting on the right outfit. None of this makes you attractive. People are attracted to you because of your confidence, your personality, and the way you express yourself. So remember this when you’re going out there into the dating world. You are beautiful on the inside, let that person shine through.
Featured photo credit: Unsplash via pexels.com
Reference
| [1] | ^ | Quora: How Can I Become Socially Confident? |
