Allowing Yourself To Be Sexy Part I What Turns you on?

Allowing Yourself To Be Sexy(Or Rewriting Your Book Of Limitations)What makes people Sexy?
I'll be honest, I don't have a complete handle on "How To Be Sexy" yet, but I've got a pretty darn good one. What makes people sexy has been a sort of hobby of mine since I was a teen-ager, when I wanted to be a model, and I danced and was obsessed with fashion. In the past almost two years or so, (ever since my ex-husband and I separated, and I found myself single again for the first time in a decade) I've decided to dust off this hobby of mine and seriously study what being sexy is all about, just who's sexy and why, and how I can apply it to my own life. This article is the first in a series I plan to bring you on what I'm discovering. One of the things I learned a long time ago about success in general is that successful people aren't the most beautiful, the most talented, or the most intelligent--successful people (in any area of life) are the ones who decide they're worth going for what they want, and don't stop until they've achieved their goal. It's no different in regards to being sexy. Being successful at being sexy is a decision, a choice--regardless of your age, your size, your ethnic background, your educational background, or current economic situation. Regardless of media trends (and trend is the key word here) there is no one absolute standard for what is sexy either--who each of us finds sexy is a matter of personal taste. While there are some people a lot of us find quite sexy, no one person is going to be sexy to everyone, not even Pamela Lee or Cindy Crawford or Leonardo Di Caprio. The important kind of "being sexy"--the one that can't be destroyed by a bad hair day (or haircut), a blemish, or not being at your ideal weight--is the kind you feel within yourself, because you like who you are, and you're happy to share it with others (most especially your lover). Being truly sexy means you accept yourself. Easier said than done! Allowing yourself to be truly sexy from the inside out is no small feat--it's a lot of work, the most of which isn't cosmetic--it's reprogramming how you think and feel about yourself. Time and time again, year after year, I read of how people have had plastic surgery to fix some perceived flaw in their facial features only to see no change afterward--why? Because they haven't changed how they essentially feel about themselves, because the changes, though expensive and painful to go through, were only skin deep. Yes, a great new hairstyle, loosing weight, getting into better shape, and buying stylish new clothes, will all make you feel better and sexier--but if you only make those changes on the outside, and don't combine it with a change in attitude about yourself on the inside, you'll quickly go back to your old ways. Think about it, haven't you set a goal to improve your appearance, or loose weight, for a high school reunion, or a special event? Chances are you reached your goal, and looked great, and got lots of compliments, but after the big "to do" wasn't there a bit of a let down when you went back to your same every day life? And didn't you slip back into your old habits rather quickly? Another point I want you to think about is this--if you don't start with the inside, chances are you won't make the best decisions about how to really be "the best sexiest you" on the outside--you'll be easily swayed by the opinions and ideas of others regarding what makes the "sexiest you". You'll take the advice of whoever has the loudest good intentions. We've all made that mistake before haven't we? Only to get home from the mall and wonder, "what in the world was I thinking?" Sure we all need help in this department from time to time, we all need advice. But here's the rub--only when we're secure with who we are, and who we'd really like to present to the world, can we listen objectively and find those to give us advice and guidance who really know what they're talking about, and really know how to help bring out our individual best. I'm not advocating elaborate make-up and hair routines as a way to being sexy either, but I am advocating taking the time to look at yourself from a bunch of different angles, in a bunch of different ways, now and then, to make sure the "you" you've put together on the outside is the "you" that you are happy to be, and to present to the world. Most of us don't do this. The "you" that most of us have put together on the outside is in reaction to our internal "Book Of Limitations". This is my term for all of those negative labels we either gave to ourselves, or others gave to us (parents, peers, teachers etc.) when we were young, that sadly, most of us still carry around. It often makes for a very strange jumble of rules and boundaries within which we believe we must conduct ourselves in order to be acceptable. For this article we're just going to be focusing on how these limitations affect our ability to feel and be sexy, but of course this "Book of Limitations" affects every aspect of our lives. The reason we need to honestly look at and question these old negative labels is that most of them simply aren't true--or even if they held some truth at one time, they were probably only true in that moment. Think about it, what negative labels do you carry around in your head? Say them out loud, and write them down. Mine are things like lazy, irresponsible, head-in- the clouds, ugly, weird, not talented enough, negative. The list goes on and on. I'm sure yours does too. Now that you've got them there in front of you, think back to when you first remember who labelled you that way. In my case many of the labels came from my parents, if not directly, then they were things I labelled myself as assumptions to the way they behaved towards me. When I really started to look at these labels carefully I realized they didn't hold up. The monster under the bed, or in back of my brain, wasn't real--it wasn't me. In regards to coming of age, and my appearance, I picked up very mixed messages. I grew from being a skinny, little 90 lbs. 5'2" girl, to a 5'7" 120 lbs. girl with a woman's body. It seemed to happen overnight--somewhere between 8th and 9th grade. What I remember are a lot of leg cramps and my breasts growing so quickly the stretch marks on them were purple. It was a transformation I was not at all equipped for. Suddenly I wasn't being mistaken for a boy anymore, and I was being mistaken for being much older than I was. Without realizing that she was doing it, my Mom labelled me the one with the great body, and my sister the one with the beautiful face. From my point of view it seemed the sort of attention my sister received for her appearance was the good kind, and mine was not--especially since the attention could be very overt--focused straight at my rather new C cups and newly round rear end. I felt between a rock and a hard place. I wanted very much to be attractive, especially to the opposite sex, but I never felt pretty, or beautiful. Objectively I knew my standards I was judging myself against were higher than most, but that didn't help emotionally. My parents were strikingly good looking people, younger, cooler, and better dressed than anyone else's parents. Friends had crushes on them. From the age of 15 on my father was never ever considered anything but my boyfriend or my brother unless someone already knew he was my father--ever. I don't want to infer that adolescence for me was sheer hell. I did have a lot of fun too. There was a lot about high school that I enjoyed. I had a lot of friends, and quite a number of crushes and beaus, but even though I could be a wicked flirt and learned the art of double entendres to drive the boys crazy, I had no sense of being sexy for myself from the inside. Growing up the message I got about being sexy was that it was about power, the power of being a desired object, not about personal expression and enjoyment. My parents might look hip and cool but talking openly and pro actively to their children about sex wasn't one of them. We got the message not to come home pregnant, but that was about it. Now I'm taking the time to figure out what's authentically me--and funny thing, when I started joining dating websites and getting out and about again I found out that some men still react to me in a very overtly sexual manner. It was tough. I felt just as angry and embarrassed as I did in High School, but this time I realized that it's their problem not mine. This time I'm accepting and celebrating the body I was given (and have done a good job of keeping in shape), and learning that my sexiness comes from within and isn't something projected onto me because I fit a particular stereotype. Now I'm accepting that I'm a work in progress and that not only do others often project an image onto me that isn't real, I've projected an image onto myself that isn't, and it's time to let go of it. I invite you to take the time to do the same. No matter how busy your life is, no matter how many bills you've got to pay, or responsibilities you've got to handle, set aside time to make sure you're on the path to allowing yourself to be who you want to be--mentally and physically. For myself personally I'm accepting that it's okay for me to be as dress as sexy as I want when I'm in the mood for that, and no, there isn't that huge of a difference between me with make-up and me without after all. I still need to work on my sexuality from the inside and really accepting that it's about my own enjoyment too, and not just about giving. I don't need to always be in control either--scary but true! So how about doing it yourself? How about taking the time to question those negative labels of your own--if you haven't done it yet, I hope you'll start to now. Baby steps are just fine, whatever you can handle. But I guarantee once you start to really look chances are those negative labels aren't even true. In the near future I'm going to be talking to some experts on how we can learn to really live in our bodies, learn more about changing our limited thinking about ourselves, and make sure we're making the best of what we've been given to work with.