Mindset Advice
HOW TO BE BODY CONFIDENT THIS SUMMER As the summer approaches, it is traditionally the time when people start to worry about their physiques and how they look generally. Having worked in the wellness industry for over 12 years now, I am often met with comments such as “I should have lost more weight”, “I wish I had worked out more”, “I can’t go to the beach looking like this”. In all my years experience however, and having seen thousands of clients in that time, I have worked with every single body shape and every single type of person. The most important observation from this, that I often find myself saying is that, “someone’s body shape or size is mutually exclusive to how they feel about it” I.e. how someone looks has absolutely no bearing at all on how they feel about their body. To put it one more way, body confidence is all about how you feel inside and nothing at all about how you actually look. Another important factor in body confidence is to remember that everyone else is thinking far more about their own body and how they look than about your body and how it looks! Dale Carnegie said it best in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People; “Humans are selfish, proud and egotistical creatures. People are not interested in you… they’re interested in themselves”. This is certainly not to say that humans are unkind and don’t care about others at all, it is just the observation that humans are fundamentally self interested, so we ought not worry as much about what others think about us, because they probably don’t care as much as we think. This notion should allow you to relax and enjoy yourself more, whatever you are doing. My final observation is that, having worked with people of all ages, the most common regret in later life is not making the memories that
22 | SKWilmslow & Alderley Edge - July/August 2022
could’ve been made because people were too worried about what other people thought. Not going to the beach or the pool, not wearing the dress or the suit, not wearing a bikini or swimming shorts, not getting up to dance at the party because of heightened self-consciousness and generally being too concerned about what others may think... To paraphrase, one of the biggest regrets of people in later life is that they cared too much about what other people thought about them throughout their lives and therefore didn’t live life to it’s fullest. So, the three golden rules: 1. You will never have the exact body you would design, you probably don’t even know what that would look like, so start to love the body you have, whatever it looks like. 2. Remember humans are fundamentally self interested, so people care much more about how they look than how you look, so give yourself a break and stop breathing in. 3. Take any opportunities that present themselves to you (if you genuinely want to) and never let worries about what other people may think about you stop you doing anything at all, ever. I appreciate that the above information and opinion may not give you instant confidence, but confronting these truths is certainly the first step in building that confidence and starting to live life as wholeheartedly as you possibly can.
