How to Stop Hating Your Body
I've discussed it before, but it bears repeating: the language you're using has a tangible impact on your perspective.
Many clients come to me unhappy with their bodies, desperately hoping that the program I present will hold all the secrets to body change, and, as a result, happiness.
They're disappointed to find out that it doesn't always work that way (I do write great programs, of course, but most people are surprised to discover that getting their dream body often feels different from how they thought it would.).
Liking our bodies (and ourselves) is an inside job, one that can't be completed in an hour a day at the gym and a salad every night for dinner. It's a practice, and it often feels unreachable: how many times have you asked yourself, "how do I go from hating everything about my body to loving it? LOVING it?"
It seems a million miles away for a lot of us. It did for me.
Fed up with that feeling, I started taking a look at why. Why did it feel like "loving your body" was reserved for other people? How do some people look in the mirror, or down at their stomach as their feet meet the scale, and not feel regret? Or rage? or unworthiness?
I found that it's often because, quite simply, they have a more accurate perception of themselves (one that's closer to reality). The person you're bashing every morning? She's not exactly you. She's the Frankenstein version of you—the one carrying your deepest fears and your harshest judgments. The subject of a painting you've observed with your most critical eye.
You've created her from a fantasy, and it begins with the way you're speaking to yourself.
We throw around words like, "lazy," "fat," "depressed," "anxious," "stressed," "failure," and "impossible" like they're nothing, but how are those seeds you're planting taking root?
That's not to say that depression can be cured with rainbows, sunshine, and positive affirmations. There is certainly more to it than that.
But, when you're feeling down, or ineffective, or like an imposter, are you a cheerleader or a hater?
The words we choose matter. They reinforce ideas (that "fat" is the worst thing — or even a bad thing — that we can be; that our worth is measured solely by our productivty, so "lazy" is a mortal sin; that "stressed' is a badge of honor; that "failure" is who you are, that's it, forever and ever, amen, and of course you got it wrong this time, because that's what you do).
They paint the self-portrait against which we compare ourselves, ever so subtly.
Every day, we measure our "ideal" selves against our actual selves — the woman looking back in the mirror, twirling her hair around her finger, asking if she can be loved *just like this* — and we deny today's iteration joy, peace, and magic she doesn't reach the lofty ideal given us by storytellers and advertisers. We compare the inaccurate picture we've painted and with which we identify to the airbrushed advertisement version, and we hang our heads and sigh.
Of course they don't measure up. They weren't designed to. There's an industry making billions of dollars redrawing their ideal portrait, banking on the fact that your grotesque, Frankenstonian self-portrait will never measure up.
And it won't. Not because you're not powerful and gorgeous and free, but because neither one presents the reality of who you are.
Change the words you're using to describe yourself. See how your relationship with your body changes.
Want to dig deeper and paint a better picture? Click here to download a free guide.
xoxo,
Steph
