Can you imagine what life would be like if the time you spent hating your body and the way you looked was time spent celebrating, embracing and loving your body? What would that look like? How would you feel differently right now? Bad body image days are kind of just a way of life, sometimes occurring more frequently than others. But how would you live your life if they weren’t holding you back anymore? What would you do? Restoring your body image takes some time and is an ongoing process. There is no shortcut and there is no one way street either. Below are some practical tips that might be helpful in really putting the focus back on YOU and your own healing.
First up is to have an appreciation for culture and uniqueness. Why does this matter? Well, every body is a unique body. The more you can come to terms with that and recognize that there is nobody who has the same curves, quirks and edges like you, the better off this will be. You can have the ability to see someone’s style and recognize how cool and intricate it is without having to judge their style or your own. You can really appreciate others and through that begin to appreciate yourself.
How does this play out exactly? Well, the best form of this is by complimenting others. Have you ever realized that people don’t know how to receive compliments? I mean like truly, just go out one day and compliment people, and women especially can get a little thrown off by that. By complimenting others more frequently, you become more comfortable and in tune with the process and can begin to compliment yourself in the same way.
Complimenting yourself is a highly important part to this process. The reality is that the voice inside your head screams louder at you than anybody else would or ever could. You are your own worst critic. The things you say to yourself about yourself are probably worse than what anyone else would dare to say to you. The problem is the way that you talk to yourself. The problem is that you would never say those things to your best friend, so why do you say them to yourself? In the journey of healing your relationship with your body, it is imperative that you start to catch yourself when you are saying something negative and start to flip that into something positive.
When you are constantly hating on yourself in your own head, then you truly start to believe what you tell yourself. It might feel silly at first to take a negative thought and force yourself to say something positive, but with practice and over time it can become second nature. When you focus on building yourself up, it becomes harder to tear yourself down. The power of your words are real. What you allow yourself to say and not correct will dictate the relationship that you have with your body. By using positive self-talk and words of affirmation, you can really start to overcome the battle in your mind and grow to love and appreciate your body.
In addition to that, you have to work toward releasing the expectations that you have for yourself to be perfect or look a certain way. This might be one of the hardest but it is also one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself in this journey. Society sets a lot of standards for your life, including the way you should look. What would happen if you disregarded what society thought that you should look like? What would happen if the standard was set by you and you alone? How you look matters to the person staring back at you in the mirror, not to the person across the room from you who doesn’t even know you. You have to do whatever you can in the most healthy way to kick comparison to the curb. It is a trap for your mind and it is easy to get stuck in that.
When it comes to beating comparison, it circles back to the way that you talk to yourself. Words have power. So when you find yourself in a state of comparison, make sure that whatever you are thinking or saying to yourself has positivity to it. Comparison is so hard to combat. It is in our human nature, and it is safe to say that everyone struggles with it at some point. It might not be in their body image, but what about that person’s car, house, job or vacation? The reality is that the world we live in now sets the stage for comparison through social media.
All in all, a good social media cleanse is something that you should consider if you fall into the comparison trap. If you catch yourself feeling worse after getting off the app than you do before you got on it – chances are there is a problem then. Recognizing your emotions surrounding this and then taking the step to do something about it (whether it is a break from the app, deleting the app, muting certain profiles, etc.) is such a huge step. In fact, doing a social media audit once per month is something that can be so powerful. You spend hours per day on those apps, so it’s no wonder that they play a role in how you talk to yourself which directly relates to the way that you view yourself.
One final thing that can be helpful in restoring your relationship with your body is movement. Exercise or whatever it is that you enjoy doing can be very powerful in terms of helping you to appreciate all that your body can do. Positive self-talk/compliments and affirmations can only get you so far, but when you really begin to show your body some love by moving in the way that makes you feel good or sets your soul on fire, then you are really getting somewhere. Then you can truly begin to appreciate the body for what it does, not just what it looks like. You were created to move, and the human body is absolutely incredible. Movement is a gift and when used from a place of love can absolutely provide you confidence and strength that you need to improve the way you view yourself.
In the journey to healing your relationship with your body, there is no right or wrong. It does take a level of vulnerability and honesty with yourself though to truly identify what is holding you back in fully embracing who you are and what you see. At the end of the day, all you have is one body. You have one body to get you through this one life, so you might as well celebrate that. You can be empowered and embrace who you are and still be a work in progress. The journey is all about learning how to care for yourself a little better and just be a little kinder to yourself and your body. Because after all, it is the only one that you have.