Tuesday Talk Love the Skin You are In Pamela Jean A New Life Coaching

Welcome to today's episode of Tuesday Talks. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm so glad you're taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to what I have to share with you today. This topic is kind of a delicate topic. It's definitely one that every woman can relate with. Every woman has definitely an opinion about this, but I think it's so important, and I definitely want to start a good, positive narrative. Today, our topic is body image. Question for you. Do you like your body? Do you like how you look? I wish I had all of you sitting right in front of me because I would ask you to give me a show of hands. Put your hand up. If you love your body and love how you look, I believe I already know the answer to this question. Question. I have not met very many women in my lifetime that have loved their body. I've been a photographer for 30 years. I've had so many beautiful women in front of my camera that I've had the opportunity to photograph and capture and document a beautiful legacy. I can maybe count on one hand how many in 30 years have said, yes, I am comfortable in my own skin. I love how I look. I love how I am. It's really not how we feel about ourselves. And truthfully, if I ever ask a mom of, like, a high school senior to get in front of my camera. Join your daughter for a quick picture. The mom always resists. She resists because she doesn't like how she looks. And, oh, I want to lose £10. I want to lose £15. But I'm here to tell you, even if you had lost the 10 or the 15 pounds, you're still not going to be happy with your body and your appearance. So it's so much deeper. There's so much more to it than just simply hitting that goal number. So, you know, I beg you to ask this question. What happened? What happened to us? How did we get here? How did we get to a place that the majority of women that you know and I know are not comfortable in their own skin. They don't love their bodies. You know, we weren't born as infants not loving ourselves. We weren't born to say, wow, my legs are fat, or I think my arms are big. We weren't born that way. This is a condition that we have taught. We've been taught we've been conditioned. For some reason, women, especially some men, but not very many women especially do not like their bodies. In fact, I would take it a step further to say that Most women hate how they look. And I mean hate or hate their bodies. That's a strong word. Hate is such a strong word. But I would bet it's very true. If you ask yourself honestly, how do you feel about your body? How do you feel about your appearance? Can you honestly say you're in love with yourself, you're in love with how you look. This is such a taught behavior. Years ago on social media, I think it was Instagram, years ago, I had read a post that a mother had shared. It was a picture of her laying on her stomach on the beach and one of her children had taken her phone and were taking pictures of her. Well, mom sees what's happening, she jumps up and says, why would you take these awful pictures of me? Look how badly I look in these, these pictures. I look awful. The child looks at mom and said, mama, I think you're beautiful. I think you're beautiful. So, moms, we are teaching our children to not see their own natural beauty. We're teaching them and conditioning them to not be happy with the skin that they're in. And I know that mother was devastated that she had reacted that way to being in front of the camera where the child was just innocently taking pictures of the mother that he thinks is absolutely stunning and beautiful, enjoying herself resting on the beach. I'll never forget reading that because it's so powerful on how we feel about ourselves, our opinions of ourselves gets directly translated into how our daughters are going to see and love themselves. We are doing this, we are responding, responsible for this narrative, this false narrative, this false conversation that we are having in our heads and our children, our daughters are having in their heads, you know, and the reality, there's another reality to this, another dynamic that I want to talk about a little bit because there are things in life that happen to us that are completely, totally out of our control, that feed into this feeling of low self esteem and not loving who we are. Things that we truly, truly, truly have nothing, there's nothing we could have done differently about how this happens. For instance, if you were molested as a child, if you were raped, if you're a victim of addiction or alcoholism, or you had a death in your family when you were a child, you lost a parent as a child. There are certain things, things that happen, events in our life that happen to us that trigger an eating disorder or will trigger a negative behavior, and the behavior is really a reaction to the trauma that we suffered. So if this is you, if this is why a lot of your feelings are about yourself. You know, that's an area where you definitely need to seek professional help. I would absolutely find a counselor that you love that can help you with work through that. Because I understand that, you know, I have been there. We all have been there. There is not one person that, that walks amongst us that has gone through life completely unscathed. It's just not the way life is. All of those things happen to us. We work through them in our own way. So if you, if you find that you're that person, you know, definitely seek professional help to get through that really, really difficult time. But I want, what I want us to talk about today is what can we do to change this narrative? What can we do to change our own outlook? Stop and think about how much time and energy you spend loathing, despising, disliking your body, how you look. You get dressed in the morning and you have a pile of clothes heaped in the corner because you're having a bad clothes day, because you're having a fat day that nothing looks right. And it's frustrating. I've had those days too. And it's always kind of like a warning sign that if you walk into my dressing area and there's a pile of clothes everywhere, it's like, oh, having a bad clothes day, having a bad self image day. We all have that. But if you think about the amount of time that you spend obsessing and worrying and avoiding and all of the negative talk that you have in your head about body image and clothing and you, you changed that narrative to something positive. What if you worked on your relationships during that negative time, all of that energy that's feeding you false, bad information, but you change that into a positive and use that to develop better relationships, to advance your career, to start a hobby, to write a book, something amazing with that time and energy that you have spent. Because I know it's not just one day that you do this. It's everybody, every day of your life. You don't love who you are. And I'm telling you, it's so important that you take the time to change that narrative and break that cycle that's in your head. And you know what, friends, we can do that and how that starts. And I truly, truly believe this is. You know, women bond over insecurities. So if you are someone who truly, truly despises how they look, you're a little chunkier than what you'd like. You feel like you're out of shape, you're going to bond with other Women that have the same insecurities that you do because you're comfortable there. That's where you're the most comfortable. What if you got together with that group of people, that friend group, that little tribe of yours, and you guys took the time to talk about, okay, this is what I don't like about myself. This is what I do like about myself. In fact, I would encourage the next time you and your girlfriends get together, get out a pen and paper and start a list of 10 things that you don't like about yourself and 10 things that you do like about yourself. And please tell me that you're going to find 10 things that you do like about yourself, because I know every single one of us have so many incredible qualities, qualities and beautiful things about us that those negative things sometimes overshadow and have like a dark cloud over all of the positives. But write those things down and really look at them and analyze them and say, really? Is that really accurate? Share those with your friends. Share those with your tribe. Have your girlfriends, you, your friends, your tribe of supporters tell you how they see you. Because oftentimes our friends and the people around us, they see us for what we really are. They see the beauty in us on the outside and on the inside that we are just not capable of seeing in ourselves. And get their narrative, get their opinion and say, you know, how do you see me? Do you see me as a strong person, as a weak person? How do you see me? And your friends are going to be honest with you. They're going to be truthful. They're going to really, really tell you exactly how they see you. And I want you to challenge yourself, to start seeing yourself in the same way that your friends see you, your tribe sees you. And then, you know, we get that crazy talk in our head about, gosh, if I just lost ten pounds, if I was a size, whatever, you fill in the blank for you. If I was a size, you know, let's just say if I was a size 2, I would feel so much better about myself. You know what? That's such. That's such a lie. And you know that. And I know that the times in my life that I was at physically at my smallest weight, I mean, I used to be down to 110, 115, and I bounced right in that number. Well, I weigh a whole lot more than that now. And I'm here to tell you I love myself physically a whole lot more today at 50 years old and at a much bigger weight than what I was back in the 110 days, I feel so much better about myself and even think about yourself back in high school, you look back at your high school pictures and you're thinking, oh, my goodness, how did I ever think I looked fat back back in those days? We all did that. We all are doing it. And friends, we're teaching our daughters, we're teaching our daughters to feel the same way about themselves. And it's honestly a dysfunctional cycle and a narrative that we have to change. And we can truly, truly change that. So how are we going to. How are we going to do that? How are we going to make that change? This is what I want to challenge you to do. First of all, and I mentioned this last week during, when I was Talking about the 11 mantras that women should be living by. One of the mantras was about finding your inner peace. And it was a gentle reminder to you that happiness is absolutely an inside job. That's true. Happiness starts from right here. It starts from within you. But here's how you can feed that and change how you see yourself is how you start changing how you see other people. I challenge you to every single day, as many times a day as you can, find ways to compliment other women. Compliment them on their. What they're wearing. You look so pretty today. That is beautiful. I love that outfit. Those shoes are fantastic. You just look happy today. You look beautiful today. The more you compliment other people and the bigger of a cheerleader and champion that you become for other women in your life, Your tribe, your friends, strangers, people that you've never even met, those. The more you're able to compliment and see the beauty in other people, the more you're going to be able to see the beauty in yourself. You know, we've all been around that person in our life. And I mean, I was bullied in high school. I know many of you were bullied and have experienced those things. And what I've learned over the years is that person who comments on someone else's appearance or says, wow, if I was that size, I would never wear that outfit. You know, that person is that way. And oftentimes the reason why the bully is the bully is because they are incredibly insecure and unhappy with who they are. My point of sharing that with you is if you can find beauty in other people, in complimenting them and being kind and just paying attention to other people, you are going to start feeling better about yourself. I, I promise you. And here's something that I beg you to do. Stop comparing yourself to other People, stop comparing yourself to other women. Stop comparing yourself to your neighbor, to your daughters. It doesn't matter. Stop comparing yourself to other people. There's only one you. God made you. You're our creator. You, you were created specifically and purposefully exactly the way that you were intended to be created. There is not one of us on the planet that are alike each other. We are all different. We're all unique. Embrace our uniqueness. God created you this way for a specific reason and purpose. Not so you could dislike yourself, so you should despise yourself, but so you could be who you are in the image in which he created you. It's so important for you to realize that you're not supposed to look like everyone else. You're not supposed to look like, you know, the Runway model or the whatever, whatever. Fill in the blank for yourself. You are you. And develop the best version of you that you can by being loving and supportive. And when you start making those compliments and you're able to receive compliments, well, what will come out of that is that inner peace and joy and happiness is going to start growing with inside of you. So the next time you are looking at yourself in the mirror, you're getting dressed of a morning and you're just not finding a lot that you look, you like, that you're seeing in front of the mirror, in front of you look at those stretch marks and say, those stretch marks, that tummy carried a baby, that if it weren't for those stretch marks, I would not have my three children, my five children, my four children, whatever, without those stretch marks, you'd never have those children. Would you ever give them back? Well, okay, there might be some days where being a parent is challenging, but would you ever really give that experience back of having your children? Of course not. So look at those, those stretch marks and appreciate them. Because if you didn't have those stretch marks, you wouldn't have those children. You wouldn't get to be a mother. And that's so important. And don't look at those legs like, oh my gosh, they're so, you know, thick. They just, they don't look very good. Those legs can run a marathon. Those legs can make a difference in this world if you choose for them to. And don't look at those, you know, flabby arms, as in, oh my gosh, those arms are just so flabby and, and they just don't look very good. Those are the arms that held that child in the middle of the night when they were burning up. With a fever. Those were those loving mom arms that took care of that child. So appreciate those things about you and instead of making all of the body image about your weight and your size, start changing the conversation you're having in your head about health and not necessarily fitness and health and size. It's really about being healthy. Be conscious of what you're putting in your body. And you know, honestly, if there's something about you that you don't like that you know you could improve on, then do it. I mean, it's simple, you know, what you put in your body is what you're going to get out of your body. If you're putting in garbage, you're going to get garbage out. I mean, you're just not going to be able to work at maximum speed, strength and capacity if you're not taking care of yourself. Everything from cutting out sodas, no more soda, just drink water and other things that don't have high sugar content. Get some exercise. Doesn't mean you have to start CrossFit or Boot Camp or whatever else. It doesn't mean that. Just go for a walk. Instead of 30 minutes watching a sitcom and TV or Netflix, take tonight, go for a walk. It's a beautiful day. Go for a walk for 30 minutes, get your body moving and start thinking about health changes. Not necessarily about, oh, if I reached a certain goal of my weight, I would feel better about myself. There are so many women, and myself included. For many, many, many years, I was a prisoner of my own insecurities of my body. I am going to go out on a limb and say most women listening to this today can identify with that. We've all been there, we've all felt it. I know you have. I have. You have. Maybe you are right now, but let's make a vow today to stop this cycle. You guys, friends, sisters, we can do that. We can stop this cycle. We're teaching our daughters to follow in our footsteps of insecurity and self esteem issues and poor body image. Why are we doing that? It's not serving us well. It's not serving us well at all. I know together we can start changing that narrative. What I want you to do for me, please do this for me. I want you to find some someone that you can compliment today. 10 people that you can compliment today that you can just say, you know what? I love that blouse. You look so pretty today. That lip color is beautiful on you. You look so happy. Using those small words of encouragement to someone, I promise you is going to change how they see themselves and how they feel about themselves. So to wrap it up, happiness is an inside job. You have to be happy with what's in here and what you see out here. For you truly, truly to be happy, change the narrative of how you see yourself. Those stretch marks carried a baby. They helped create your sons, your daughters, your children, and you would never give them back. Those are your. Your most prized possession are your children. Your biggest accomplishments are your children. So I beg you today to pay people a compliment. Use my hashtag, be kinder, be quiet. Because I really do feel that, I believe that makes such a big difference in the world. If you can be, you know, be kind, then be kind and say something wonderful. But if something negative and not wonderful is going to be said, then don't say it at all. Just keep it to yourself. So thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this was enlightening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Reach out to me on Facebook messenger or send me an email if you want to learn more about body image and have a much deeper conversation. I would love to have that with you. Thank you so much for joining me. This is Pamela, and have an awesome, awesome day.