I asked readers of this blog what the number one problem they were dealing with relating to confidence. Do you want to guess what the number one response was? The number one response was body confidence. How to have body confidence, where it came from and how to keep it when people around you are being jerks.

Being a predominately female audience this wasn’t surprising. It’s always about our bodies, have you noticed that? It’s a conspiracy, team. Where do you start when you have a long way to go before you and your body are on lovey-dovey terms? How do you recover from a body confidence slap in the face? Folks, I have been thinking about just that and have made a list.

10 ways to love your body more, TODAY.

Be naked more often. 

Seriously. I know you’re all like WHOA hold on there Suger but it’s true. For every time you finish your hair and makeup naked in front of the mirror, maybe even wander through your house or lounge in your backyard {stop hyperventilating, work up to it. Haha} you start to chip away at that idea that your body is something to hide. Something to be ashamed of. Hidden from view, even from yourself. 

Admire OTHER people’s bodies but not just the ones you deem perfect.

The end of that sentence is just as important as the start. Start to notice, letting the judgements roll off you like water, the bodies of the people around you. The imperfections, the beauty in each and every shape you see. Start to develop an obsession with bodies that aren’t your own in a positive way and see the results when you look in the mirror. All of a sudden your body won’t have to measure up to this impossible ideal, it’ll just be a body that you love a little bit more than you did yesterday. 

Take better care of your body. 

It’s my assertion that if you are bagging out the body you have and tut-tutting it every day that there’s a good chance you are treating it badly. Overfeeding or underfeeding it, over or underworking it and all that jazz. So I’m telling you now care for it like you would if it belonged to a friend. Take better care. Get more sleep {Suger!}, take a walk, eat when you’re hungry and make it food that will nourish you when you can lay off the stimulants and things that replenish you.  

Remind yourself of all the good your body does.

While you are standing around picking at every single thing you believe to be wrong about your body, the way it fails and the faults, it just goes on doing what it does. Breathing, pumping blood, holding your guts on the inside… All of it. As someone who has had numerous issues conceiving, believe me when I say I know what it is like to look at my body and demand it does better, be better. But that sort of thinking doesn’t get you anywhere. You literally cannot live without your body, so give it a break, ok? 

Forget everything you have ever been told about your body ever.

They lied, short version. All the things they told you growing up were wrong. You don’t owe anyone anything. You are not the sum of your body parts and it’s not your job to be attractive to other people. Your body in whatever form, state of health and however far it has progressed through this thing called life is perfect just the way it is. Right now. It couldn’t be anything else. Like I said before, they lied, forget everything and get happy. 

Touch yourself, yup really.

Get familiar with the shape, the feel and the texture of your body. Get hands-on. And not just for your health for such things as breast exams and all that but because getting touchy-feely creates intimacy just like it would with anyone else that you were groping. I’m not talking about masturbation or intimate touching but the sort that is more PG friendly in the getting to know you sort of way. But you know what, if you and your body are disconnected masturbation might not be a bad idea anyway. Yup. I just went there. Get to know your body for all the good that it does for you. Stop treating it like some foreign object standing in the way of your dreams.

Stop saying you can’t do it.

Think I have some sort of body love superpower? Like I woke up and there it was? Nope. It’s not the case. One day I decided that things were going to change for me. I wasn’t going to be spoken down to in my own head. The pressure from the world at large would not get to me because for the first time in my life I looked at it for what it is, an idea. Just an idea that I could choose to believe if it served me, which it didn’t, or not, which did. And you can too. Seriously. For a moment suspend your disbelief if you have it and trust me when I say if I can love my body, you can love yours. 

Get angry. 

Seriously. Start now. No one has the right to tell you how you should look. No one. Not your mother, not your partner, not your best friend. No one! And yet from a young age, women {especially} are pulled one direction and the next. Do this, don’t do this, look like this, dress like that, eat this, don’t drink that and on and on it goes. What chance did you have? What chance did any of us have!? Get angry for a minute, it’ll make it easier to let all of that go so you can start fresh. Get angry, then get ready to start over.  

Become a raving body love fan. 

There are lots and lots of people out there determined to change the way that we look, talk about and think about our bodies. Go and find them, Google them and start to fill your head with that message for once. It’ll help in the forgetting of ‘everything you know’ thing. Replace the message that your body is somehow less than with more positive, affirming messages. Change the way the thoughts are wired in your head and start to really embrace your body in a way you didn’t know was possible. Let the body love folks loving goodness wash over you and you never know, you might just become one of us… *insert evil laugh here*

Remind yourself why it’s important.

Why does it matter to you anyway? Why is loving your body more important to you? Is it for you, for your family or because it occurred to you as a good idea? Take a deeper look and figure it out for yourself because knowing why you are doing it gives you something to hold onto those days that you suck at it. 

My reason why? Because there are young girls looking up to me and I want to show them the way. Because I wanted to stop feeling so freaking horrible about myself all the time. Because the voices of the women around me were deafening in the chorus of negative thoughts and ideas. They had been taught too. I could see it in them. In me. We all needed to change and we have. You’re next lady. 

 

There you go, team. Hop to it, feeling good about yourself is closer than you think. All we have to do is undo like a billion years of cultural programming… Piece. Of. Cake. Haha. Let me know how you go, are going, went and all that. I’d love to hear all about it. Did I miss something that worked for you? Share it below so we can all benefit from it, please.

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*images via Unsplash here and here.