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The Dangerous Thing All Women Do

The surprising habit that is hurting your self-esteem, your confidence, and your happiness — and how to break it

Sharleez Safi
5 min readNov 23, 2023
Image by Vitaly Gorbachev from Pexels

Every morning, you wake up and get ready for the day. You brush your teeth, wash your face, do your hair, and put on your clothes. But before you leave the house, you do something that could be harming your self-esteem, your confidence, and your happiness. You do something that could be sabotaging your relationships, your career, and your goals. You do something that millions of women do every day, without even realizing how dangerous it is.

You take a mental picture of yourself.

What is a mental picture? It is a snapshot of your appearance that you store in your mind. You take it when you look at yourself in the mirror, or when you see your reflection in a window, or when you glance at your phone camera. You take it every time you notice something about your body, your face, or your image. And you take it a lot.

According to human biologist Gary Brecka, the average man takes 151 mental pictures of himself in a month. The average woman takes 1,000,360. That’s more than 33,000 mental pictures a day. That’s more than 22 mental pictures an hour. That’s more than one mental picture every three minutes.

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Sharleez Safi
Sharleez Safi

Written by Sharleez Safi

I’m Sharleez Safi, a writer who loves beauty, learning, and creativity. I share tips and stories on how to live a beautiful, creative, and fulfilling life.

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