*This is a repost that will hopefully respark your confidence for the new year! Here’s to an incredible 2020!!!
We’ve talked a lot about body positivity and confidence here. A lot. That topic is a main focus on this blog, actually. Recently, I was having a think and what crossed my mind was about the day-to-day of a person that is body confident and body positive. How is that working out for ya?
I’ve spent the last five years really getting down to it in terms of being body confident and positive. You can just decide to be the thing and then be the thing. However, maintaining the thing is a different story. That takes work. Hard work. Looking in the mirror and always, always, stopping yourself before you say something negative about yourself. Stopping yourself from making a comment about a picture a friend took of you at a party when you weren’t ready or didn’t know it was being taken. Heck, stopping yourself from negative talk about photos you DID know were being taken because you booked a photography session. These are hard habits to break, but I did. You can too.
Breaking these habits took literally years of constant vigilance to kick them to the proverbial curb. Stoppping the negative from being spoken into that mirror. Not saying the negative thing about that photo before someone else says it (at least that is why you claim to say it, but in truth your friends are too busy looking at themselves in that photo and having their own battle to say anything nasty to you about you).
I now get to reap the benefits from all that work to be sure. Now I get my photos back, and I am genuinely happy with them and want to share them with my friends. I get ready in the morning and genuinely like what I see before I head out the door. Those are the confidence crisis moments. When you are put to the test. If you were on “The A Team”, it would be welding time! You welded real good, too! Congrats! Now what?
The habits are broken. Now it is time to make body comfort happen. This one isn’t quite so sexy. This one is tricky. Body comfort is when you get up and get dressed, get through that little mirror crisis moment without a second thought. Body comfort is when you spy yourself in a shop window and just keep on walking. You don’t have a crisis moment. There is no test. You didn’t even think about your reflection at all. Just imagine it! It is possible. It is. The crisis moments still will happen from time-to-time, but for the most part, you are just, you. You know? Cool, right?!
How do you make this happen? Honestly, I don’t think this is one you can make happen by doing anything. It seems to be a by-product of constant body confidence and positivity. You get yet another benefit and isn’t that nice?
I realized that I had indeed achieved this state recently. I was having a discussion with someone about life and junk and stuff, and I said, “I am the love of my life. I love myself enough.” You know what? Every word of that was true! You’ll get there. I did.
Love, Kim and Scout
The Oxford
