How To Improve Your Body Image Confidence!

Are you confident in your appearance? Do you like the way you look? Do you feel pleased when you look in the mirror? Or is it the opposite? Do you feel critical? Do you feel judgmental or aversion towards yourself? Do you criticize yourself? Does it lower your self esteem and confidence when you look in the mirror? If so, watch this episode. I'm going to share two powerful things with you that can really help you shift that so you like the way you look more and as a result, have a lot more confidence and not only in your body image, but in your whole life. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and this is the show for you. If you want to maximize your confidence in every area of life that matters, including your body image and how you feel about yourself, this is so important and you'd be surprised how much it can affect every different area of your life. So if you're benefiting from these videos, hit the subscribe button below and the notification bell so you get notified when the videos come out. Because the more you watch these, the more you immerse yourself in this, it'll start to affect your whole perception of yourself and the world around you. It will raise your confidence level and that will allow you to put yourself out there more and more freely connect, have more romantic connections, social connections, and ultimately improve your life. And that's my goal for you. So stay current with these videos. It will really help over time. Now, in this one, we want to look at your body image confidence. This is huge. So many of us have issues with our body image. The vast majority of people, at least in the United States, are dissatisfied with their body. A lot of people are overweight and they say, well, that's why I'm dissatisfied with my body. However, that dissatisfaction, that frustration, that dislike of their body doesn't motivate them to get in better shape. That's the story. If I hate the way I look, well, that's going to motivate me to work out. Well, it usually doesn't. But even if it does, like does that fuel really feel good? The old self hatred fuel? So let's unravel this. I'm going to share two powerful ways to do that right now. One is to look at what is the standard that you're holding for yourself. I find when I get in there, in the psychology of this, most people have a very unrealistic, unattainable standard. I know for me, when I looked at myself, I would really judge a couple of things. I Used to judge my face, particularly the area on my eyes. And then I also started to judge my body shape as well, thinking I need to be more like basically superhero dimensions, right? Like the V and the no body fat and all muscles bulging. And so those were the ideals that I had. And I would look in the mirror and I wouldn't have those things. And then I would feel disappointed or discouraged or low inferior. So I'm wondering, what is the standard you have for yourself? What is the expectation? I was asking one client about this recently and he's like, I don't know, just, you know, in good shape. I was like, well, what does that good shape look like? He's like, I don't know, muscular and ripped. I was like, okay, like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine kind of thing. And he's like, yeah, that would be one. Okay. All right. Do you know how, like, crazy level of like extreme that takes to get. And. And he might not even be sustaining that for that long. That might just be a very brief period of time for one movie, you know, one set of the movie shoot where he's doing like push ups right beforehand after doing like months of hardcore training and then body cut, fat cutting and all this stuff to get there for that one moment in time or for women, you know, let's take a. I don't know, a swimsuit, Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. And by the way, interesting stuff about how in the 1950s versus 2010, the weight of the women on the front of Sports Illustrated swimsuit has dropped significantly. So take that healthy body image. But over time, what happens? We start to see this image. This is how it's supposed to look. This is how I'm supposed to look. This is how I'm supposed to look. And we don't keep in mind that those women that are on the COVID of the magazine are, are not necessarily healthy. They just fit this certain image. In fact, to get to that image, they might be quite unhealthy. They're probably significantly underweight. Maybe they can't even exercise as much as they need to or want to because they're undernourished. And then on top of that, you take someone who probably lives like that most of the time. And then there's the photo shoot, right? And leading up to the photo shoot, for like a month or two or more, they're gonna be doing some more extreme version of dieting and restriction to get down even slightly, to get even thinner. And then they're gonna go on the beach and take like a thousand photos. They're gonna take the best few that show no wrinkles, no fat folds, no nothing. And then they're gonna go Photoshop those. And that's the image you see. It's ridiculous. It's extreme. So I'm sharing this stuff in detail so you can start to say, whoa, that's crazy. I just want to be a normal human. Maybe you want to shift your goals. We'll talk about that in a second. So what is the standard you're comparing yourself to? The next thing is, what's your pattern of when you look in a mirror? So I discovered this not too long ago, that we all have a pattern of what we look at when we look in the mirror. For me, when I was younger, I'd go straight to the face, look at the area right in my eyes, around my eyes, and be like, ew, gross, Dark circles, ew. And then I'd look away. That little shitty pattern I ran like, I don't know, 80,000 times. Mirror, look away, look away. Not just mirrors, car windows, storefront windows. Just any place there's a reflection of me, you know, a spoon, whatever, right? It's insanity. It's just a pattern. It's unconscious. So what's the pattern that you might run when you look at yourself? And what I found is really interesting is when I let that go and I stopped looking at myself in my eyes, I got over that. I felt I liked how I started to look more. I got more confidence, then started to focus on my body. If I was shirtless on the side of my stomach where my love handles would be. And it's like, no, there's not total 0% body fat and gross. And that will be the shitty pattern again and again and again. So how do we shift this? How can you shift this? We gotta just change the pattern. So you gotta consciously, when you look in the mirror, do something different. And one thing that I found very helpful is to consciously focus on several parts of your body that are neutral or that you actually like. So you look at, I don't know, like, look at my chest, be like, oh, I like the way my chest looks, my pec muscles, you know, I like my shoulder neutral on, say, my neck or something like that. I like my cheekbones or whatever you like about yourself or are neutral about. Maybe you haven't gone so far as to, like, parts of yourself. And that's a whole nother video. I could go into a whole other topic of, like, why not, like, the way you look? Why do you have to hold this grudge Is it really motivating you? It's not. It's not going to make you better. That self hatred. You can never beat yourself consistently into doing something. And just look at that motivation that might come. Let's say you do want to lose weight. Let's say you do feel unhealthy and you want to get healthier. This is what I was talking about, changing your goals. Maybe a goal for you is health. That's a goal for me. I want to be strong and vital and energetic. Well, great. But what's going to motivate you to go do activities? Looking in the mirror and being like you just make me sick. You better go work out today so you don't suck as much. Okay, like let's give that a grade in terms of motivation over time. And the other one is like, wow, I like the way. I like the way that looks. That looks great. I've really been working on that area that gets stronger. I can see I'm looking fitter from working out. I'm awesome. I'm on track. This is great. This is really working out. Which one has more motivation or more positive motivation to sustain workouts and lifestyle over time? So not only do you feel better, it works. So get on your own side. Let this self criticism go. Let go of the crazy images that you've seen, the expectations you have for yourself. Let yourself be human and enjoy. And click the subscribe button and the notifications. You want to watch more of these in the future and leave your comments below. I'd love to hear what's landing for you from this video, what your biggest takeaway is and how it's affecting you in your life. And 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. Talk to you soon.