Body Confidence Issues: Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin

Brigitte talks about body confidence issues, something that many women struggle with every single day. Her suggestions to be comfortable in your own skin provide the inspiration of the day.

In a world dominated by social media images of perfect bodies and faces, it’s hard to keep body confidence. However, being comfortable in your own skin is of important value to your mental health and overall psychological well-being. So, how to accomplish such a feat when everything seems to be working against you?

Don’t Be Afraid to Speak Up

When you speak your mind loud and clear, people will likely respect you more. If you have a tendency to conform and do whatever people ask, you will eventually come to the point where no one will listen to what you have to say. Speaking up doesn’t mean going against everyone else; instead, it’s about being assertive about what you need. Once people know what is bothering you, they will most probably try to make changes.

Practice assertiveness with your friends by expressing your needs and emotions, and proposing how they can change their behavior to meet your needs. By expressing your needs in an assertive way, you respect other opinions and maintain respect for yourself too.

To Overcome Body Confidence Issues, Be Good to Your Body

Your body is a temple and, therefore, you should treat it that way. This means regular sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet. Those are the three pillars of a healthy lifestyle.

Start by making a sleep schedule and sticking to it. Go to bed before midnight and wake up at a point where your REM cycle is not interrupted. For a full recovery, you need at least four sleep cycles per night.

If you interrupt this cycle during the REM phase (the last 30 minutes of each cycle), you will feel grumpy and dull most of the next day. You can use a sleep calculator to help you estimate when you need to set your alarm clock to get the most out of your sleeping time.

As for exercise and food, you need to make a schedule for these too and find the right balance that enables you to function every day at your best. This means no skipping meals or avoiding workouts. Once you make healthy living a habit, you will start to notice fewer body confidence issues than before.

Let’s not forget to look after your health. If you wear glasses, continue to go to regular eye checks and choose whether you want to upgrade from glasses to contact lenses to make daily life simpler. You could also go and see your dentist and get Invisalign aligners so that you can correct that crooked tooth at the front. Being good to your body doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be looking for “correction,” but you can overcome so many more issues when you are manifesting some confidence! Sometimes, that means looking at how you treat yourself and being better at it!

Dress to Express, Not to Impress

You can tell a lot about a person based on the way they dress. Extraverted people tend to dress colorfully and choose extravagant, stand-out pieces of clothing. Meanwhile, more introverted people choose plain, basic colors and textures. The way we dress also counts for how self-confident and comfortable we feel in our skin. Tight dresses show boldness, while a loose, long dress communicates a wish to hide and avoid expression.

It’s important to think about how your way of dressing expresses who you are. Think about that statement the next time that you go shopping. Look those body confidence issues in the eye. But, how?

Look for a piece of clothing that you’ve always wanted to wear but never had the courage to do so. Choosing the right piece of clothing is essential to boost self-esteem and be comfortable in your own skin. It could be a V-shaped décolleté shirt and a pair of boyfriend jeans that fit legs of all shapes and sizes well.

Another good idea is to cut down on makeup. Stop hiding your natural beauty underneath layers of foundation. Instead, you might invest in your skin quality with regular peels and skin care products. No makeup is more beautiful than your natural look.

A great way to stand out from the crowd and shine with confidence is with your clothing choices.

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

In the end, nothing will change if you decide not to take a risk. A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but it’s also a place where nothing grows.

If you have body confidence issues, take it as a sign that you need to change something about yourself. This might be a simple change or something big. When you get out of your comfort zone, you have the space to be more comfortable in your own skin. Examples of positive changes are:

• Travel and meeting new people
• Discover new ways of living
• Develop new thinking patterns

To have true self-satisfaction, you need to stop obsessing about being perfect. Instead, start to accept yourself just the way you are. Embracing other cultures can help you see yourself differently, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know your past or your background. For example, if you are insecure about being a size 14, go to New Zealand and discover how desirable your female figure is there.

Maybe you decide to take a friend who also has body confidence issues with you on the out-of-the-comfort-zone adventure. Not tomorrow, but today. All you need is a pen and a paper to start writing down the things you want to do but never had the courage to, and then start doing them, one by one.

With each thing that you do, your ability to be comfortable in your own skin will grow. It’ll get easier to try new things. Lastly, you will learn that feeling confident isn’t a yes-or-no thing. Instead, it’s a process of development and getting closer each day to the ideal version of yourself.

About Today’s Writer

Brigitte Evans is a Cosmetic Skin Care Consultant and a writer from Australia, with a sweet tooth for makeup and everything sparkly. When she is not drooling over the next big thing in the beauty industry, she reads mystery novels and makes plans for her next trip. She is the proud aunt of Sophie, age 4, who has rounded her Chanel lipstick, but she loves her anyway.