As we go through the big changes in life, from college, flying the nest, getting a job, and everything in-between, we know the importance of looking after our health in the most literal sense, but when we’re trying to be a healthier version of who we are, a positive self-image can seem like a difficult thing to acquire. After all, we’re going through a period of time where we are learning about who we are, but we’re also seeing the types of people that we want to be, in conjunction with being exposed to the supposed “perfect” human beings online. With all these mixed signals, what can we do to learn the act of having a positive self-image?
Focus On Your Daily Health Practices
Developing a positive self-image is about daily practices. We have to remember that what we do every day is going to build up within ourselves and become the norm. Something like your eating habits is essential to who you are. It’s unfortunate that so many people feel that they need to drastically alter their relationship with food so they can lose a couple of pounds and feel better. While there’s a big difference between losing weight so you feel better and healthier, and losing weight so you look thinner, having a healthy relationship with food is crucial. While there are residential bulimia nervosa treatment centers, we must remember that eating and our relationship with food is a psychological issue. We can undergo emotional eating, or restrict our calories thinking that this is the best and quickest way to losing weight. Because eating is something that we do every day, part of it is about learning a healthy approach to our diet but also realizing that it can form the foundation of a very healthy lifestyle. Everything you want in moderation. And when you start to look at your daily life, a little bit of what you fancy isn’t something that you should feel guilty about.
Learn The Tools To Be A Happier You
When you try to be a happier version of yourself, only you can truly know what makes you happy. But this doesn’t mean that we cannot learn additional tools to improve our perception of ourselves. Learning the right tools, especially if you have a poor self-image, means that these little hacks to a healthier way of being can help you figure out the keys to happiness. Sometimes they are very simple, and they are things that we all know, such as the need to stop criticizing ourselves or learn a more positive mental attitude. But on the other hand, there are things that we can do to improve our self-worth. This means that we can undergo certain hacks, or find a process that can give us a little bit more meaning. Because we’re all under pressure, and feel various stresses, we can very easily take it out on ourselves. Feeling stress and anxiety can mean that we start to blame ourselves, and these little seeds of doubt can soon grow into massive trees of anxiety. It is to do with truly figuring out what will make you feel better? We can feel that if we lose a couple of pounds that we’ll be happier, but what happens is that we end up chasing the next rainbow, and it will continue. Learning to be a happier version of ourselves right in the present means accepting who we are.
Focus On What You Want, Not Anyone Else
Whether you are a people pleaser, or you feel that everybody needs to be happy so you are happy, this can take the attention away from focusing on what you really want in life. When we start to focus on what we want, we may very well be in for a shock. The simplest way to start this is to do the things that really interest you. You may have spent a lot of your life doing things that other people have wanted you to do. And, for once, start to really think about what you want, and be the person that you have always dreamed of being. This is something that can take a lot of soul searching. Sometimes we just don’t know what we want. This means that we’ve got to take time to focus on getting to the core of who we are. As we can feel that pleasing others makes us happy, after a while, this means we end up losing track of who we are and what we want. That’s not to say you should be completely selfish, but you must find the right balance. Understanding when you are doing too much that’s not benefiting your health or happiness, or learning how to say no, can give you that inner strength to really focus on what matters within you. We can spend so long trying to focus on what other people want, that after a while, we start to do this automatically. This means that we will be in for a lot of stress and anxiety as we get older.
Stop Worrying
Learning how to have a positive self-image is about getting rid of those inner concerns. We can worry about what other people think about us. This is partly why we are so concerned with how we look. But apart from how we look on the surface, when we start to think that we’re not being the sort of person that others want us to be, this starts to snowball into our psyche. This cycle of worry can be with us throughout our entire lives. Learning how to stop worrying can be about finding little tools to make yourself happier. But it could also be to do with prioritizing yourself. When we worry about what other people think, this becomes part of our emotional makeup. This means that we start to dress a certain way, or we continue to worry about things that we can realize, over time, is not so important. Learning to stop worrying is partly to do with that daily practice, but it’s also giving yourself permission to fail. We can worry so much about what others think because we made a wrong step, or we’ve asked a silly question. And after a while, when we feel kickbacks through situations like this, it puts us off doing anything. Learning to stop worrying is about tackling the smaller things, and gradually expanding your comfort zone. You may have seen people that you wonder, “wow, they really don’t care what other people think! How can I do that?” Part of it is about letting go of preconceived notions of yourself, but also learning to accept yourself.
It’s not easy. But learning to have a positive self-image is is partly to do with those daily practices that can help you in the long run, but it’s also about giving yourself permission to be yourself. So many of us feel that we have to do the things that are expected of us, but this is betraying the one person that really matters in our lives. Learning how to be more positive is one thing, learning to have a positive self-image is another. But also, when these components seem disparate, and we lose track of who we are over time, we will start to suffer those feelings of anxiety. We have to learn to accept who we are. A positive self-image isn’t just a nice thing to have but its intrinsic to who we can be. It isn’t an easy thing to do. But the important thing that you have to remember is that you step in the right direction right now. You are you, and no one else.
