A former client and mentor recently shared a photo of me from 1997. It totally shocked me as do most photos of me that are over ten years old. I had such a poor self image and I swore I was fat. I looked at this confident and very beautiful young woman who was skinny and wondered why did I think I was fat? Can I get that kinda fat again? LOL
Raising my three daughters and a son, I made it my business to tell them how precious they were. I wanted my girls to have a positive self image and I certainly did not want to be the source of any negative ones. The world tends to offer those up with abundance if you listen. However, I was not so careful with myself.
A dear friend recently told me that she had come to recognise how hard she was on her own self image and saying things to herself that she would never say about or to another woman. Why are we so hard on ourselves? We take being our own critic to abusive levels.
The stories we tell ourselves about our bodies, our experiences, our work are the reason we have the results we have. If you believe you are ugly or fat, then you walk around inside that body as if you are ugly and fat. If you believe that you must show up in the world with makeup or noone will see you then being seeing barefaced is traumatic.
This is the same for us in business or in social spaces. We want to apply for a role which has five requirements. We meet four of them and we immediately say we are unqualified. A man sees the same job advert and can barely say yes to one, yet he would apply and probably get it because he presents himself with confidence and sells his ability to deliver results regardless of his qualifications.
What story are you telling yourself about the value you bring to the world?
When you hear this story, whose voice is it that you hear? Your voice, a parent who was full of judgement and fear-driven?
BREAKING NEWS! You don’t have to maintain the old story in your head. You get to change your mind. You can ascribe new meaning to an old story or experience that negatively impacted you. One experience can validate an old belief and it takes repeated effort to believe a new story but it is possible and doable for you.
I have learned to celebrate my body and my looks in all its varied shapes and sizes. This body helped me birth four amazing humans and it has sustained me to do the work I love. I am my body’s biggest fan and I tell her so. My goal is to care for her from the inside out with the right words, the right foods and the right actions.
We dive into storytelling, both the internal and external stories we tell in The Visibility Project. It’s my 12-week accelerator that provides you with the strategies and content to move from invisible to visible in the spaces you want to impact.
Learn more about it and other opportunities to work with me here.