How To Be Confident In The Way You Look
On one hand, a lot of people say you should just be comfortable with who you are.
That no matter what your body type is, you should love yourself for it.
And that’s beautiful if you can adopt it!
It’s incredibly helpful if you can adopt this mindset as a baseline… but it is not everything.
The problem with this is that you settle for something that you may not want.
There are many people who say they love who they are, but who would instantly trade their body for a fitter body.
These people justify their situation so they can settle for what they have.
On the other hand, if you just strive for some crazy body image that you won’t achieve for a long time and hate yourself until you do, you will also not love yourself truly, even if you do achieve the body image, because it is based on comparisons.
If you truly want to love yourself for your body, and be truly confident you must develop an honest love for what you see in the mirror.
How do you do this? Quite easily; you stay honest with yourself.
First you need to tell it how it is:
You are not confident in your body. Period.
Similarly to how you enjoy certain foods and just dislike others, you have a certain body image that you think looks good and a certain one that does not.
That’s how it is and no matter how much you try to twist that, the truth will still be the truth; lying about it won’t change how you feel inside.
Second, you need to tell yourself what you want:
Now is where it gets interesting!
You want to look different. Period.
This is also a truth and there is also no point in denying it.
What are the exact steps you need to take to get closer to that goal.
When you finally come to accept where you are and what you want inside you can begin to develop a plan to change it.
The reason why you want to do all of this is not to get anywhere.
Figure out the details of the body type you want and the looks you want to have, and then determine how you can get there.
The next step is to be honest about the path and to give it an honest try.
If you determined you need to work out regularly, then do that regularly!
Follow the plan to reduce the discrepancy between your current and ideal image, so that what you want to look like becomes an ever closer reality for you.
The point is not to reach that goal of your ideal body image but rather to go on the journey itself.
You start feeling confident in your body when you are honest with yourself and take steps to improve.
That’s enough!
When you can go to bed at night thinking that you gave it an honest try, that you gave it your all and that you are definitely on the road to improvement you sleep easier.
You look more confident in yourself because you see progress where you saw stagnation before.
This progress is what makes you feel confident because it gives you the feeling that you can achieve anything, that you are not stuck where you were before and that you can have what you want.
That belief alone is enough to make you feel confident in yourself.
So, to recap, here are the steps once more:
- Be honest with where you are.
- Be honest with where you want to be.
- Determine the path to get from #1 to #2.
- Give the process an honest try.
- Love the journey/celebrate trying/focus on the progress.
Originally published at http://quora.com.
