Let’s talk about BODY IMAGE today. I think we all deal with body image issues at some level regardless of our background or the size of our clothes. If someone isn’t dealing with weight issues then they worry about their skin or hair.
So what is Body Image? According to wikipedia, “Body image is a person’s perception of the aesthetics or attractiveness of their own body. It involves how a person sees themselves, compared to the standards that have been set by society.”
Have you ever stopped to think why so many of us have a low body image these days? If you were somehow able to change the way you feel about how you look, could that change the way you show up for yourself and others in your life?
Personally I feel like it’s played a huge role in the way I feel about myself and the way I show up in the world. Growing up I had a lot of acne and when I look back, I can see hours and hours spent on trying to fix my skin and look good. I would compare myself with the actresses and models in movies and I used to believe that their skin really does look flawless (had no idea what role make-up plays in the way people show up on TV lol). It caused me to have low confidence and never really feeling good about myself. Now when I look at my photos, I am amazed at how hard I was on myself. I looked amazing and didn’t even have that much acne that I needed to spend so much time fixing it.
This was when I was growing up. You might be wondering…what about now? I’ll tell you what, it is an ongoing journey. If I don’t practice self awareness, I even now find myself wrapped up in stories about how something or other doesn’t look quite right.
For example, a couple months ago I started telling myself that my hair doesn’t look good. I would say it like 10 times a day. I told Deep and Nathan (my hubby) about it. They would tell me that you have gorgeous hair and they look amazing. But to me, every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw was shabby hair that was hard to style. Soooo….I cut it short. I’d convinced myself that if I had short hair, like I had a few years back, I would look fabulous. But unfortunately after the haircut I felt like it looked worse. So now I couldn’t even make it long again lol.
Then one morning I found myself standing in front of the mirror, saying to myself how weird my hair looks and I just stopped and realised that I keep saying that to myself over and over. And I know for a fact that as long as I keep saying that, there’s no chance in hell that it will ever look good. So I decided to reframe this self-talk and practice saying something nice instead. I started telling myself, “I love how soft my hair is and I love the colour of my hair.”
Guess what happened next? Within a few days my hair started looking beautiful to me, I even had a few compliments from people about how gorgeous it is. I got interesting ideas about how to style it. And now I am really enjoying how my hair looks and feels. I know when you see my photos, you’re probably thinking, I had nothing to worry about coz my hair looks amazing. But I just couldn’t see it. And I think what we see in ourselves is what matters most. The whole time I kept saying that my hair doesn’t look good, Nathan was telling me, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think your hair looks gorgeous”. Deep was telling me the same thing. But for me it just didn’t matter. I didn’t like it and that was that.
This is why even though you might think that when you get to some goal (whether its losing weight or getting clear skin or in my case pretty hair), you will feel amazing, but in reality, your mind will probably come up with some other flaw you might need to fix before you can feel amazing about how you look. It might be a good idea to not take counsel from the voice in your head about how you look.
Can you relate to this? Have you ever felt like you keep saying something to yourself (and others) about how something doesn’t look good (whether its your weight or skin or anything else) and everyone around you keeps telling you the opposite?
This is how much our body image can impact the way we feel and show up in the world. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and in this case, the only person that really matters when it comes to seeing beauty in you is YOU!
Now if you’re wondering how you can do that…we have something very special for you. For our this week’s podcast episode, we interviewed this gorgeous sister duo – Simran Nanwani and Aaina Nanwani, about Body Image. In this episode they share some really simple and applicable strategies that you can use to elevate your body image and feel absolutely fabulous about yourselves right here, right now.
Listen to the Podcast Episode here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Here’s a little bit about our beautiful speakers:
Simran is a Registered Nutritionist and a part-time yogi. She has been involved in health, wellness and food sector for 3 years, having worked as a Market Nutritionist in Nestle, corporate wellness, health workshops for various age groups, and freelance consultant. ⠀
Aaina has a background in Children’s Psychology and has pursued a Masters degree in Education. She was a former teacher in ACS Jakarta. She specializes in social and emotional development of children and is also a certified kids yoga teacher. ⠀
OVER TO YOU
What’s your biggest take away (Aha!) from this article? Where in your life can you see, elevating your body image could have an impact? Comment below!
Lots of Love,
Simar xo
Ps. If you enjoy this podcast episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a great review! We will be bringing you some really amazing content about health, beauty, wellness and business success. Also, as always, we love hearing from you, so if you have any questions or special topic request, please feel free to comment below or email us at glamourandpurpose@gmail.com