YOU ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL

Here's why I don't like beautiful people.

Just because you’re beautiful and perfect, it’s made you conceited.”

— William Goldman, The Princess Bride

I was having a conversation with a friend some weeks back, and it wasn't until then did I realize why I tend to have a natural kick against people who I think are extraordinarily beautiful, or at least people who think they are exceptional beauties because of their pulchritude gifts, or as a result of hearing people time and again affirm their looks.

People who grew up hearing how beautiful they are, how fair to look upon they are, and how the world loves beautiful people will naturally start leaning towards their beauty tendencies to achieve things that should naturally take hardwork to achieve.

Folks who think they have perfect physical features usually won't put in as much work as people who know for a fact that beauty isn't their strong suit.

It is an unfair advantage, and unfair advantages exist in life, no doubt.

Unfair Advantage is when you come out of a rich family and the things that people work 20 - 30 years to get drops on your laps from the day you were born.

Unfair Advantage is when you grew up in a stable family, in a society where broken homes are the norm.

Unfair Advantage is when you were born with certain gifts that are peculiar to you, and will put you ahead of many people, not because you did anything right or they did anything wrong. Some people call it luck.

And you know the terrible thing about luck? About people who dwell on luck to do their bidding? People who rely so much on their unfair advantage? It will not only displace the place of hardwork and the application of one's self, it will also limit the growth of the people with the so-called advantage.

Leaning on your unfair advantage will let you relax when you can push. You will never learn grit, resilience, you will never learn how to push and work hard for what you want, because you have an unfair advantage.

I mean, no one person is the same. Even though unfair advantages are unevenly distributed, they are still distributed across board, but if you continue to rely on it to get you things that hardwork and grit should naturally get you, you will not explore the capabilities inside of you as a human.

And what happens in times when that unfair advantage doesn't work where you thought it would? What happens when the only thing that would work is the natural hardwork? What will become of you then?

It is true that there's such a thing as the attractive people bias. In fact, a post on Business Insider 2019 cited a research that "good-looking people make about 12% more money than less appealing folks, and that attractive real estate brokers bring in more money than their less attractive peers." It is an effect of the halo bias.

The Halo Bias is a bias based on the first impression you have of a person. If your first impression is that someone looks attractive then the tendencies to favor such a person becomes natural.

This is why there are more good looking people who aren't as smart as their counterparts but are doing a lot better, career-wise, financially, emotionally, economically, and in many other ways that matter.

All of this is okay (well, maybe not so okay, but life's not exactly fair, is it?). The purpose of this newsletter isn't about whining about unfair advantages, but about sounding the alarm that the same unfair advantage that's getting you ahead can be the reason for your stunted growth and your limited capabilities.

A lot of people have relied on beauty, wealth, perfect upbringing, and whatever it is your unfair advantage is for far too long that you didn't build the capacity that matters; the capacity that other people who don't have any of these qualities and advantages have had to build and grow. Which is why in the long run, the folks who strive to build these capabilities end up shining.

Unfair advantages are like fixed qualities. Relying all the time on them lead to fixed mindsets. Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset even said, "In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them."

When you think you are already something, or you already have something that puts you ahead, you don't strive to achieve more. You don't strive for growth.

You only seek for things that confirm what you already know, forgetting there are people who believe they know nothing, don't have anything, are not beautiful, smart, and do not have the right upbringing, so they need to work twice, thrice as hard to get ahead, and eventually do.

This is the danger to thinking you are beautiful, and you can replace hardwork, grit, and resilience with beauty. Sometimes you'd succeed, but what will you do in times when your unfair advantage doesn't matter?

You are beautiful, perhaps. I am too. But don't you think your life will be better, you'd be more hardworking and intentional if you didn't think you were so beautiful?

Don't you think you would live better, expand your capabilities, cleave to learning new skills, and work twice as hard, if you didn’t rely on the unfair advantage you think you have?

Won't it work better on your growth and personal development to live like you are exactly equal, with equal capacities to your counterparts?

You are beautiful, but will you let that be all there is to you? Think about it.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya

Handzinspired.