How To Gain Body Confidence

I’ve been on a body acceptance journey for a while now. I thought the older I got the easier it would be to be happy and confident in my body but I was wrong. For me, it’s been the complete opposite. It seemed the older I got the lower my body confidence got. So now that I’m on a journey of self-acceptance, I figured I would share some tips on how to boost one’s self-esteem.

Finding confidence in our bodies can be a major challenge. We are constantly bombarded with images of beautiful women advertising women’s clothing, we see movie stars who look a million dollars and this can leave us feeling insecure with our own bodies.

Maybe you wish that your legs were longer, that your tummy was a little flatter, you may want more curves or fewer curves, you might want bigger breasts, or you may want smaller ones. What is desirable to one person may be the source of another person’s discomfort with their own appearance.

Many people believe that their lives will improve if their bodies looked a different way. There is a link though between body confidence and happiness. The good news is that you don’t actually need to change the way that you look in order to find body confidence, you just need to change your outlook.

In this article, we’ll look at body confidence and how you can improve the way your own perception of yourself.

Fake It Till You Make It

You are likely to have met people who aren’t really conventionally good looking, however, they still manage to turn heads whenever they walk into a room. This is because having confidence in your own body is attractive. If you are someone that loves the way that they look, then everyone else will too.

It may seem like a mammoth challenge to ditch your negative mindset, however, if you start faking it, it will make it somewhat easier. When you look at yourself in the mirror, don’t start pulling yourself apart for every fault that you see. Instead, tell yourself something good about yourself. Even if it is forced. Eventually, this behavior will become second nature and you’ll start to hold yourself in a more confident manner.

Try To Identify The Cause Of The Lack Of Confidence

Knowing how your mind works can be a challenge. If you are able to manage to work out where exactly your lack of confidence comes from, then you will be able to work on repairing it.

Whenever you feel bad about your appearance to write down what happened. What was going through your mind at the time? And, what were you doing? Analyzing these emotions takes practice and the more you do it, the better you will understand where your lack of confidence in your body stems from. Start to look out for repeated patterns in the way that you think.

It may be that this is something that you cannot work through on your own. Having the help of a counselor or therapist will mean that you will be able to get to the root of the problem.

Learn To Show Your Body Some Gratitude

Instead of looking at a part of your body and thinking the worst of it, think about what it does for you. For example, you may look at your arms and wish they were more toned, however, your arms are a very useful part of your body and when you stop and think about everything that you can achieve using your arms, you may be grateful for them being there.

List The Things That You Like About Yourself

If you focus on the positives, it is a great way of boosting your self-confidence. If you are able to say that you love something very specific about the way that you look, then you should remind yourself of this fact as often as you can.

Make a list of things that you like about yourself. Write down why you like it too. If you are struggling to look at yourself in the mirror, write out this list onto post-it notes and put them around your mirror.

Avoid Competitive Self-Criticism

Often, other women’s self-confidence issues are behind our own. If another woman is obsessed with her self image, it can be all too easy to join in on the self-criticism and even to try and one-up each other.

When friends put their bodies down, don’t be tempted to join in, instead pay her a compliment.

Dress To Your Strengths

When it comes to dressing, make sure that you dress in a way that emphasizes the things that you actually do like about yourself. If you have a certain body type, find out what type of items of clothing are going to be the most flattering for your body type. Learn to play to your advantage and don’t be afraid to flaunt the things that you do like about yourself.

Give yourself a break

Your own internal voice will quite often drag you down. But remember, if you wouldn’t say something to your friends, sister, or mother, then it’s not something that you should be saying to yourself either.

Learn to tell your inner voice that it is not welcome when it is making unhelpful comments.

Keep A Diary

Keep a record of all of the positive things that people say to you and record all of the positive feelings that you have about the way that you look. By writing these down and reading them back, you’ll notice that your mindset will very quickly start to change.

If anyone pays you a compliment, write it down. If you thought you looked good on a particular day, make sure that you write this down too. Being able to look back on these memories will help you on days when you are struggling with your confidence.

Pamper Yourself

Spend some time on yourself. Take a nice relaxing bath or even head to a spa for a massage. You deserve to be pampered and pampering yourself every now and again is good for improving your body confidence.

Body confidence is something that you can gain without changing anything about your physical appearance. It is a state of mind. Focus on the things that you do like about yourself and learn to love the things that you don’t like. And if you need to, fake it until you make it.

“Always Remember You’re Beautiful!”

-Lola