I’m going to share something I wish I’d learned a lot earlier on in life.
For a long time, it was hard for me to feel positive about my own physical appearance. I was insecure, and I didn’t feel confident in my own body; it was hard enough thinking everyone else was judging my flaws, so I hated being able to see them all myself, too.
And then I read a post that changed everything.
Insecurity stems from the way we compare ourselves to other people, so it’s prominent in our society today, but for many of us, it’s also something we’ve been programmed into since we were young. It’s the way we’re taught to think, whether consciously or not, and it affects us from an early age. The key to changing the way we see ourselves? Changing our automatic mental response to our appearances.
This post I read - I don’t have it anymore, or else I would share it - discussed how we need to start training our minds to react differently when we see ourselves. That starts with positive affirmations. Whenever I caught myself thinking something negative about my appearance, I instead switched to thinking something positive - even if I didn’t necessarily believe it was true. It started by telling myself I looked cute. Every day, I told myself something positive about my appearance, and in that, I was beginning to retrain my brain to think about myself in a positive light.
And I’m not saying that it was easy! It took time, and I held so much self-doubt that at first, I really didn’t believe that what I was saying was true. But then something happened: I began to feel so much more confident in myself and my appearance. I woke up excited to get ready because I felt positive about my body. I stopped comparing myself so much to other people, because I liked myself for the way I was. I fostered a positive mindset about myself that helped me grow so much from the shy, self-questioning person I used to be into someone who feels good about herself. It was a hard process, but the effects are so, so noticeable. Now, whenever I see myself in the mirror, I think Dang, we are killing it instead of Dang, I look terrible today.
This may not work for everyone, and I’m not saying my advice is foolproof; just offering some food for thought. But positive manifestation when you’re feeling down about yourself? It’ll help you create the best version of yourself - one who knows that they are 100% worth it.
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