Brush the self-sabotaging stuff aside, a bit at a time

Sara Marsden-Shreeve

THERE I AM AGED 12, STOOD IN THE GYM AT OUR SCHOOLS’ ANNUAL CHRISTMAS COUNTRY DANCING AFTERNOON...YES YOU HEARD RIGHT. THE USUAL SCENARIO OF GIRLS ONE SIDE AND BOYS THE OTHER IN WHICH THE POPULAR LOTHARIOS GET TO STRUT THEIR CONFIDENCE AND CHOOSE THEIR BOTTLE GREEN CLAD DAMSEL IN A PENCIL SKIRT.

I was usually one of the stragglers at the end, awkwardly looking at her shoes and awaiting the nod of acceptance from any one of the remaining boys. This ceremony felt like a rite of passage despite the fact it was inevitable that at some point, paths would cross with the higher ranks.

It wasn’t until I’d realised the music had stopped abruptly, halfway through a ‘dosey-doe’, that I had landed face to face, mid hand clasp, with ‘Mr Popularity’ himself… gulp.

In that vacuum of silence that quickly followed, I felt him drop my hands and saw him step away with a look of disgust like he’d touched a corpse. To which he then turned to his surrounding audience and retorted that it would be best “not to get too close (to me) in case he caught” and I quote “ugly disease”. All I heard after that was the laughter, which somehow made an otherwise flippant remark before, now become something concrete and truthful. I was obviously ugly!

The word Mother looks like a bird’s beak opening next to the word ‘other’. Becoming a parent is a challenging choice to make but does not have to be a debilitating one.

I leave with my second child, that I now realise, gave me the time for true reflection. I needed to start dealing with those negative voices in my head and tell them to shut the hell up and sit down because I was tired of it.

So, in my spare time and over the course of a few years, I became a qualified Image Consultant and went on to set up The Image Tree back in 2013. I built my own website, attended courses, and learned to blog, use social media, and got myself out there by joining networking groups.

So, the moral of my business story, learn to embrace the positive stuff about you and try to brush the self-sabotaging stuff aside, a bit at a time. The negative beliefs you have about yourself are not yours to keep and have usually been put there by someone else, so do not let them shape you.

Sara Marsden-Shreeve

Sara is an Holistic Image Consultant, Coach and Body Positive Advocate who teaches women how to bridge the confusing gap between Mind, Body and Wardrobe. You can learn to rock what you’ve already got and wear your happy.

Read more about her in this issue.