Story by: Rebekah Hibbert on March 27, 2017
Looking through the magazine covers this time of year never ceases to amaze. They make a lot of promises — promises that typically seem to encompass one idea: Loving ourselves comes with improving our bathing suit bodies.
Here is a radical idea: It isn’t your body that needs to change, it’s your thinking.
Here are some of the top headlines this month, edited to be more realistic and useful in helping you love your body!
Want to increase confidence and decrease anxiety about wearing your bathing suit? Master the power pose. Try the “Wonder Woman” power pose. Just like Wonder Woman when she is preparing to kick butt, this is accomplished by standing tall, with your feet spread apart, your chest out and your hands on your hips.
Research has shown that doing this pose 2 minutes a day in front of the mirror not only increases your overall confidence but actually changes the way others perceive you. When you assume the body language of a powerful person, you feel more confident and exude that to others. So put that bathing suit on, find a mirror and strike a power pose!
One of the best secrets to a hot body is self-confidence. An easy way to improve self-confidence? Practice gratitude. Be thankful and show appreciation for yourself, the people in your life and all the blessings you have.
Gratitude can reduce social comparisons. Rather than comparing your body to others or being judgmental toward people who have a different body shape than you, appreciate others while still respecting your own body. So practice gratitude, improve confidence, and you’ll know all the hot body secrets you need to know.
Take two weeks to cleanse your mind. The best way to do this? Get off social media. If you think the answer to improving your body image is going to be found on a celebrity’s Instagram, in a two-week tea cleanse or in daily comparisons to other’ bodies — you are mistaken. In fact, studies show that social media is a contributing factor to decreased body image and self-esteem in girls as young as 10 years old, so why put ourselves through it on a daily basis?
Unplug and stop comparing your everyday life to someone else’s perfectly photoshopped highlight reel. When we control our use of social media, we are less judgmental of our bodies, so let’s do it more often.
Now go forth and crush the craving to judge yourself and lose the weight of society’s expectations. The truth is, we live in a society that profits from our self-doubt. Even the so-called “health and fitness” magazines need to sell the idea that what we look like can always be improved upon. They want us to believe we need to be prettier, skinnier, more tone, more tan; and on and on the maddening “self-improvement” to-do list goes.
No amount of changing our body will help our insecurities or make us look better in our bathing suits if we don’t love ourselves first. What we need is to accept who we are, to appreciate who we are and love who we are.
Remember this, repeat it to yourself, then go pick out a suit you love and have fun wherever you happen to be while wearing it.
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