5 Ways To Improve Your Body Image

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome. Today's episode of the show. I'm excited to be with you today because we're going to be talking about something that I think is very important and which is your confidence in your body, your body image, how you think that you look and how you feel about the way that you look. And this is a huge confidence problem for most people. Most of us have learned from a very young age that the way that we look is unacceptable in some form or another. And usually that doesn't kick in when we're little kids. Little kids usually aren't aware of it and as we get older, become more inundated in the culture and start to see if we fit in, usually around middle school. That's when people will start to get a pretty clear idea of I look good or I don't, which is very closely linked, if not equivalent to I am worthy or I'm not, I'm popular or I'm a loser, I'm lovable or I'm unlovable, I'm worthy of dating or I'm not worthy of dating. I belong and need friends or I don't deserve that. It's all wrapped up in a lot of ways in our body image. And of course, that continues, you know, bombarded with messages all day, every day. So we got the overt. You know, people might make fun of you, or you might see criticisms of people and their appearance, or the COVID the more subtle. Just every image you see is someone who's like, unusually fit and looks, has these perfect dimensions. And so it doesn't take too long for us to start to feel bad about ourselves. And yet what a huge drain on your confidence because what do you look at yourself in the mirror many times a day, perhaps, even if you're not intentionally trying to do it? Mirrors are everywhere. You look down, there's your stomach, you see your face in reflections, pictures, photos, everything, right? So we have this continual Potential source of low self esteem, a reduction in our confidence. You can be feeling great and all of a sudden you see a photo of yourself and then you're like, I hate myself. And all of a sudden you lose all those great feelings. So we want to protect you from that. We want to help you start to feel good about who you are. Not just on the, you know, your behavior and your personality, but also the way that you look. Because it's very important to get to a place of peace, acceptance, self love, in order to have a rock solid confidence that doesn't fluctuate like crazy throughout the day. So even if that's not your main goal, like maybe your main goal is social confidence or dating confidence, I'm gonna bet that how you feel about your body is gonna influence those areas. So let's resolve this and then help you get out there doing the stuff that you wanna do in the world so you're not worried about how you look and get in your appearance and your body and all that. So five ways to improve your body image confidence. The first one is go deeper. Go deeper. It's not your body in itself. How you react to your body, your face or anything else is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. Do you like yourself? Are you habitually negative and critical of yourself? Does that go beyond your body? Are you just negative about, you know, how you move, how you stand, the clothes you wear, how you come across? If you're confident enough, if you're articulate enough, if you're intelligent sounding enough, if you're smooth enough, whatever the specific thing you're measuring yourself on, are you regularly measuring yourself and then finding yourself falling short and being upset with yourself? So it goes beyond the body. That's just one area that you do it in. And so if you're doing it all over the place, then you're probably gonna do it with your body as well. And we want to look deeper at your relationship with you. Why are you so hard on yourself? Why do you criticize yourself so much? You know, this is one of those things that we can be doing for years and we're not fully even aware of it. It's like the whir of a computer fan in the background, but it's just always there. You kind of get used to it, you know, the hum of the air conditioner in your house, just get used to it. But this hum, this whir is poisonous self loathing dripping in bit by bit all day long. And we want to pause for a second and look at that and Say, whoa, whoa. That's not helpful. It's not healthy. Why am I doing that? So even just let's look at the body, because that's what we're focused on in any aspect of your physical appearance when you criticize yourself. And first of all, what is it? You know, there's usually some specific points we can criticize, aspects of our face. I used to criticize the area around my eyes a lot. It's so funny how we latch on to certain things. So the area around my eyes can be darker. And so I was like, oh, that's unattractive. Right. That's raccoon eyes. And so I would fixate on that. But I don't really care that much about what are called crow's feet. You know, wrinkles on the side of your eye. I don't really care about those. I'm sure I have more of that now than, you know, 15 years ago, and I'll have even more 15 years from now. And maybe it's, you know, men are typically less concerned about wrinkles than women. That's a generalization that's not gonna be true for everyone. But so certain things we're more susceptible to. Right. Another thing that I noticed myself in the past criticizing myself for was hair loss. And I still have a head of hair, but it's thinner. And if you look at it from the top down, it's, you know, it's a slow retreat for the hair. And then, of course, my body size, that was an area that I criticized myself all the time for when I was younger, especially. I need to be bigger, leaner, and stronger. Really the title of a book, by the way. But bigger, leaner, and stronger. That's what I need. And so whenever I'd look in a mirror, I would just go to the points that I thought were unattractive, which was the area on my eyes and my stomach. Be like, okay, the area of my eyes is still bad, and my stomach is not lean enough. That's just what I would look at. And maybe occasionally other parts of my body. My posture's not good enough. I'm not more muscular in my arms, whatever. And it could be different for you depending on your conditioning and your gender and whatever. But, okay, so maybe you relate to that. You're doing that too. Why? What is it gonna do? You really want to examine this? And we're gonna get a little more in the fifth way about what to do here. But I just want you to start thinking about it. Go deeper than just like, oh, you know, we get fixated. Oh, yeah, my stomach is not right. Okay, I'm gonna go work out and do sit ups. And we get all wrapped up in the content of that as opposed to slowing down and being like, wow, you know, what would it be like to be with a partner who every time they saw you naked or shirtless was like, yeah, you should tighten up there. You know, your arms are not quite lean enough. And, you know, one eye is slightly. You're not totally symmetrical in your face. Yeah, it doesn't look very good. It's kind of gross. Like, holy cow, would you want to be with that person? Right? And you're doing that to yourself, though. So we got to slow down and look at this and label it as the insanity that it is. Okay. That's the first thing. Go deeper. The next thing. Remember I was asking you why you do it. One of the common ideas is that it's gonna motivate me. It's gonna motivate me. I'm gonna, oh, look, I'm a gross, fat, ugly piece of shit. Okay, Now I'm inspired. Right? So number two is use better fuel. This is a second way to improve your body image, confidence. Use better fuel. So don't use I hate myself and I'm gross. As your primary source of fuel. It doesn't work very well. It's bad fuel. It gunks up your engine, makes you feel terrible inside. Maybe it gets you into the gym or to go workout or something, maybe. And that's questionable if that's even the real source of why you're in there. And even if it does, it doesn't last very long. Or even if you make progress, it's never enough, Right? So it's a dangerous, unhelpful fuel, and you want to use a better fuel. Attacking yourself will never make you look better. And some of the things that you're attacking yourself for, it's not like, oh, yeah, get in the gym and get in shape, and it's gone. It's like, that's not changing, you know, without some sort of radical plastic surgery or other interventions. And those are largely built upon insecurity. Right? People don't want to do the inner work, so they're like, I'll just solve the physical appearance and then I'll, you know, then I'll feel great about myself, which they don't typically. So use better fuel. What's a better fuel? Well, you know, surprisingly enough, it's actually loving and appreciating yourself. What? I know. That was totally out of left field. You probably weren't expecting me to say that, right? What is all this self love stuff? Nah, nuts to that. I gotta become the best, the biggest, the strongest, the richest, the fastest. And then, then I'll feel confident and I'll love myself and I'll be all popular and everyone will approve of me. Right? Is that the game you're playing? I can fall into that one too, but it's not, it doesn't work. So it's an inside job. We gotta shift inside. So we gotta change our fuel. And I, I promise you that feel work so much better is positive encouragement, praise, reinforcement, determination. You know, for the gym, I was finding that my motivation was flagging and I was like, ah, I was going to it, but I was kind of just going through the motions. And then I sat down and said, okay, what's my deep motivation? And you know, typical motivations are what, six pack abs? Yeah. And I tried to have that juice me, but it just didn't. I was like, yeah, I do want to, you know, get leaner or stronger, that sort of thing, but that's not enough juice. I needed better fuel. And so one fuel that I found was one of my core whys, was I want to get stronger and leaner and fitter than I ever have because it's proving something to myself. And if you listen to any of my podcasts from this year, earlier in the year, I've talked a lot about my journey with chronic pain. And for 15 years I thought I was broken. Thought if I pushed myself, my body would crumble and get injured and is weak and I can't sustain a solid workout. I thought all that was true. And so to be in a place now where I can push my limits and step into fear, because every time I'm reaching the edge of my physical abilities, which is where you get stronger, something in my brain kicks into like defensive protective mode. Oh, I can't handle this. I'm gonna get hurt. And so I see it as a beautiful extension of this confidence work to bring it into physical confidence. How can I face my fear there too, and then do what I've never done before, prove that I am stronger than I ever thought and just push fear back on yet another front. Overcome fear. And to me, oof, that was instant juice. Cause it taps into my whole mode of being, my whole, one of my core purposes in life. So that got me going. That's better fuel. And look, if the fuel is I want to look great. Well, maybe. Why though? What is great to you? But why is It. Because then maybe I'll get more dates. Well, great. But link that up in your mind. Is it because you think that maybe you'll feel proud of yourself for having been able to achieve or accomplish something? You'll feel proud when you look in the mirror. Great. But use the positive side. Use the carrot. I'm gonna feel proud of myself. And then start working on feeling proud of yourself right now. That's the real feeling, grateful for your body right now. So when you look in the mirror, look at. And we're talking a little bit more about this is kind of leading us in the third way. But look at the places that you like and praise yourself for those. Give yourself that acknowledgement, that credit. What if your pattern, instead of scanning the places you didn't like, was to focus on the things that you liked? Shift your focus on purpose to that. Which actually leads us into the third way to improve your body image confidence. This is a very specific technique. And one of the issues is we look. Well, it's two things. We see the parts of our body or our face that we don't like. And we judge the heck out of them. And then we feel bad or we avoid looking at those places entirely. We're like terrified of seeing them because we know that if we see them, we're going to attack ourselves and feel bad. Both of those are not healthy. Right? They're both forms of avoidance. And we want to relax and do exposure work on the parts of ourselves that we don't like. We have to make friends with the parts of our body that we don't like. Because even if you're working on changing it, look, change is slow. The problem is people try to use self hatred as a fuel. They're overweight, for example. They're like, I hate my stomach. Okay, fine. And because of that, they have to get rid of it now. And then they become susceptible to buying all kinds of weird, crappy, ineffective, fad things. Diets, pills, exercise equipment that don't work and they don't use them. Or they're getting into a healthy regimen, healthy routine, they're eating well, they're working out, they're exercising. But they want the results like in a week. And it's like, look, I don't know, I don't care how much you're working out or how little you're eating, you're not going to get massive results in a week. And they're certainly not going to be sustainable if you do it too rapidly and crazily. So, I mean, we're talking months and, like, big changes in your body. We're talking a year or more, right? Like, big changes. So let's slow down. Let's get okay with ourselves right now along the way, on the journey. So what's the part of your body you don't like? And what if you just looked at that part of your body right now and if you can hold it, maybe even hold it or put your hand over it and just notice what happens? This is like a mindfulness exercise, and I'm gonna kind of do it with you right now, a mini version, but I encourage you to do this on your own later. Like, literally just get out of the shower or something. And if you tend to always, like, scan your stomach or your, I don't know, side of your obliques, your love handles, some aspect of your body, some aspect of your face, your hair, whatever it is, and you tend to avoid looking at it or you look at it and you're like. You feel, like, disgust. Then slow down, become mindful, and just give yourself two or three minutes to just breathe, look at that part of your body and notice, does your mind kick in a fast hyperdrive of how it's gonna fix it, how gross it is, how it needs to change, how it hasn't changed, how hopeless you are, how angry you are, how frustrated you are, how it needs to change, how fearful you are that people aren't gonna love you unless it changes? Okay, there goes the mind spinning. Bring your attention back into your breath, into your heart. Just look at this body. Wow. This body. You know, if you weren't so busy judging it, you might notice how amazing this body is, how it moves you through this world, how there are trillions of operations happening simultaneously right now, in this very second that you're listening to me. Cells and communication, cells inserting and excreting things. Energetic communication, biological blood, neurotransmitters, plasma. Everything's just, you know, billions trillions of operations all working in some insane form of unison. The level of organization and symbiotic interactivity between not only your own cells, but, like, other organisms, like bacteria living in your gut, mitochondria living in your cells that are, like, not even part of your DNA, that are like another creature that's symbiotically living with humans, it's just. It is insane. And here we are obsessing about the shape of our nose. You know, it's like you're on top of a pile of money. You're on top of a massive pile of $10 billion. It's like a mountain, right? And you're looking down, you're like, eh, that hundred dollar bill's a little dirty. Oh no, I don't like it. It's like, man, you got a working body, you're rich, you are rich. So really making friends with the parts of your body that you don't like, that exposure, that's the third way. Alright, let's carry on. Number four. This is a big one. Improve your lifestyle. Improve your lifestyle. Take care of yourself if you want to feel better about your body image. Because a lot of challenges with our body might come from poor choices and poor habits of health. Whether it's not sleeping, sleeping, crazy, irregular hours, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, doing other drugs, eating processed food, fast food, junk food. Food that lives in a pantry that doesn't need to be refrigerated and has weird stuff in it that you can't pronounce. We'll talk about that with my sons. They'll ask why can't we have that or something. I'll be like, dude, it's got crazy chemicals in it. What are chemicals? Well, let's talk about that, right? So it's got weird chemicals in it. Maybe you shouldn't be eating it because all those things as it accumulates to make you feel a little more lethargic, less energy, less energy to take care of your body and move, less sleep makes you feel worse, more likely to eat bad food, make poor food choices. Same thing with being hungover, not to mention the harmful effects of the alcohol or other substance. And so you can see where you're at in life if you want to go the clean living path that I've been doing the last couple years here, it's just being cleaner and cleaner because the more I do it, the better I feel. And I used to drink a lot of alcohol, smoke cigarettes, smoke pot, do occasional psychedelic trips, which I'm still a fan of, but you know, and then as time got on, I was like, well, I feel bad every time I drink. So I pretty much reduced drinking a lot. And then I stopped drinking and then I didn't feel good after I smoked cigarettes, so I reduced and stopped that. And then pot, marijuana, that one was harder because I really enjoyed it, but I would feel bad the next day. I'm not saying that's that way for everyone, but that was just for me when I really studied it and so stop doing that. And then I found that I would be eating rich foods, fatty foods that were like hamburger, French fries, soda combo. Well, why am I Doing that because I'm feeling bad. My heart's empty or aching. Let me fill it with this. So the more I studied it, the more I just systematically reduced, and the more I became able to tolerate and feel feelings, the less I needed to turn to those things. And as that happened, my. My body form changed, but I also just felt better about myself. Another lifestyle change you might want to make is work out more. Go to the gym, go for a run, go for a bike ride. I've found I've had this multiple times where if I start to feel like I'm not as satisfied with my body or whatever, and then I'm not working out that hard or whatever, and I just make a commitment and start working out harder again, I instantly feel better about my body and nothing's changed. It's like a day later you're not getting any radical change in your body. But I just feel good about it. I'm like, yeah. Cause it's a reflection, remember, of that relationship with yourself. Am I taking care of myself? Okay, number five, core decision. This is really what it comes down to. Making a core decision to be on your own side, you know, to be. And part of that is to love your body, is to love your body as it is right now. And you know, there's always going to be a next level to achieve, to attain, to work towards and get there. And so how can you love your body right now? And really, I do think it comes. There's like, well, how do I do it and how do I make it happen? And I would say, well, I think it comes down to a fundamental decision. I think that if we are clear that this is what we want to do, that this matters most to me, this is important. And I can see all the harmful effects of not doing it, and I can see the benefits of doing it, then we get clear and we make that decision. And we can make that theoretically someday in the future, or we can make it right now. Which brings us to your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to make that decision. You just want to do it right now. And maybe you've already made a decision like this, but maybe you could just reaffirm that. You know, there's a. There's a quote that I heard recently from Louise Hay, who wrote, you know, extremely well, selling books called about loving your body, about the body and mind, body connection and health. She's written a lot of books about that. And then her publishing house has gone on to become one of the leaders in the personal growth, development, all that stuff world. So huge influence in that world. And she had a quote that was something like, you know, I choose to treat myself and my body like a dear friend. I choose to say loving things to myself and my body. I choose to treat myself well. I blanket my cells, every cell in my body with that love, that acceptance, and it creates vibrant health in me. And that's the choice that we want to make. Because look, whatever your goals are, whatever you think, it's going to get you to look better. At the end of the day, what you want is to feel good about yourself, right? To feel loved, to feel worthy, to feel valuable, to feel proud. What if you didn't have to earn that? In fact, what if giving that to yourself right now then gave you a better fuel? Because when you feel good about yourself, you feel excited about your body, you like the way you look, you want to take care of it. You want to go work out more. You feel good about the way your face looks and your appearance. You want to go and put yourself out there in a bigger way and interact with more people. And lo and behold, your energy is better. You're more outgoing, you're more interactive. And what do you get back? More positive responses. So you can decide. Right now, I'm going to be on my own side. I'm going to love and accept myself. I'm going to blanket every cell of my body with love, acceptance, approval, warmth. And just watch. Watch what that does for you. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sa.