Is Your Body Image Lowering Your Self-Esteem?
In my previous post on self-esteem, Body Image was listed as a major cause of low self-esteem. When you compare yourself to others, how they look, and how the media and others think you should look, rarely do you measure up. You look at someone with a body you think you'd enjoy having, and then hear the negative way that person views their body.
You're self-esteem will rise as you come to appreciate, respect, and learn to love your body. You can love and respect your body as you are working on becoming healthier, stronger and healthier.
Let's Look at What You can Do to Appreciate Your Body
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- Appreciate what your body can do for you. You may be focusing on what you'd like to change about your body. Instead, focus on what your body does wonderfully even when you may not give it the nutrition and exercise it needs.Consider that your body can climb, run, walk, dance, sleep, laugh, and dream. Take a deep breath and feel the air coming into your lungs and brings oxygen to your blood. Listen to or feel your heart beat. It does all this without you giving it instructions.
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- Take a good look at your body. What do you like about it? It could be your hair, your eyes, perhaps your skin. What do people compliment you on about your body? Be thankful for these things.
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- Change the clothes you wear. What do you wear that has you feeling great? We all have our favorite things. When you wear what has you feeling grand, you'll feel better about yourself.
- What you see in magazines isn't what the person looks like. Below is a short video about four "ordinary" women who were given a photo shoot and then the photos were manipulated.
- Ask yourself what you gain by being unhappy with your body. Perhaps your poor body image keeps you from interacting with others. You may not dislike your body as much as you like that your body image keeps you from addressing how you feel with people.Your body image may have you feeling shy, miserable, or less effective. It may be keeping you from focusing on creating the fulfilling life you desire.
When you find yourself focusing on what you don't like about your body, change your focus to what you do like. Give appreciation to your body for all the wonderful things it does.
There's no reason to focus on what you can't change about your body. Spend time focusing on how to attain the desires you want the most.
That video was AMAZING!! I love it and all others I have seen that are similar. But I think what made this one so powerful is that you could see how wonderful these women were as they are, and you see them as themselves, then see a static, “perfected” image that doesn’t really look like them, and then you see them, with all of their uniqueness & personality again and it’s so clear that real is better! And after seeing it happen like that, it’s clear that the cover models aren’t perfect, either. They are just normal, attractive people who have been photoshopped to an unreal perfection.
We really have to remember that what we see in the media isn’t who the people are. We’re comparing ourselves to someone who isn’t real.
I have a lot of repair I need to do to my body image and self-esteem. The largest part of my problem came about from being sick for three years. It’s amazing how quickly our body image and self-esteem can plummet and how long it can take to rebuild it.