I spent most of my teenage and young adult life trying to be smaller. Always trying to lose weight. I would go from doctor to doctor complaining that no matter what diet or exercise program I tried that I simply wasn’t losing weight. I was suffering internally and no one, except my mother knew about it. Externally, I was a confident, wicked smart and entertaining young women with her whole future ahead of her. Internally, I constantly felt that my efforts in my career and my body were never enough. My perfectionism was bleeding all over my shiny life.

I wholeheartedly believed that once I looked like a model I could finally start to be more successful in my life. With this dream body, my confidence at work would shoot up, I’d find my soulmate and everyone would suddenly love me. I had this imagined scenario that my father would finally think I was successful and all of a sudden by dropping 30 pounds I’d be able to finally start LIVING. Meanwhile I was building myself an incredible career, but it was always overshadowed by this crippling belief that I was only as worthy as my appearance and body.

“I cared more about how my life looked rather than how it felt”

I was living in a constant state of resistance — which is basically the definition of suffering. I was unable to accept and meet myself where I was — which lead to years of yearning for external validation and ignoring the dark truth that my obsession with my appearance and body was just a cry for help for something much deeper. My issues with self-image and desirability were just clues that I had absolutely no connection with who I was or how I related myself to the world around me. My lack of identity within myself led me to spend most of my time obsessed over my external life.

I cared more about how my life looked rather than how it felt. I was constantly trying to change what was outside of me to make me feel better inside. That was until I found another path…the path towards self love and acceptance.

Generally people assume that self love is looking in the mirror and falling in love with the reflection you see. The problem is that the attachment to that outcome prevents us from truly walking the path towards self love and acceptance. The truth is that we weren’t engineered to love the way we look — it wasn’t until social media age and digitally altered photographs that we started paying attention to the false belief that our worth is determined by our appearance.

The truth is that self love isn’t only what you see in the mirror, it’s about loving and embracing the invisible parts of yourself — what you have to offer the world and yourself is what makes you beautiful. This isn’t to say that investing in your appearance and owning your style is negative — it’s just when it determines your worth that we run into some problems.

When I started committing to truly finding what makes me a beautiful woman from the inside out and started to allow myself to feel all of the emotions I kept on a shelf for when I was perfect I came to the incredible discovery that my friends, family and strangers still treated me with the same amount of love, respect and attention that I deserved.

My external appearance started to become a mirror for the beautiful woman I was inside. I was committed to loving, accepting and embracing my body and myself at my core and through this journey I found ultimate freedom.

Now I walk, talk and sleep knowing that I’m enough. Not perfect. But simply enough.

Today I am committed to helping high achieving women find more worth within themselves and find more freedom, love and joy in their lives.

With Love,

Ela Topcuoglu