How to Reset When Your Body Confidence Takes a Hit

All this month we’ve been focused on how to cultivate, and maintain, a healthy body image and positive body care.

We’ve looked at the ways that our environment can challenge how we think about and approach our body care. 

We’ve explored how to get in touch with our values, so that we can use them to inform our actions where our self care is concerned. 

And we’ve looked at how to cultivate a values-based self care mindset.

With all that positive body care foundation set down, it’s important to recognize: sometimes life goes sideways.

Hopefully you’ve begun to embrace the truth that diet plans and restrictive eating and punishing exercise will never put you on a path to a positive and healthy mindset.

And, knowing that truth, hopefully you’re beginning to see how it is possible to make your priority how you want to feel in your body, and how you want to make your nutrition and fitness about being the person you want to be- showing up for those you love and for yourself with energy, positivity, and compassion.

And maybe you’ve even set down some wonderful habits that make you feel amazing  and fully like the you you want to be!

So now, let’s consider the many ways that you can get off track, and how to gently bring yourself back to you

• Social media. 
• Media in general. 
• Unkind words from others. 
• Illness.
• Menstrual cycling.
• A difficult chapter at work or school that causes you to miss out on sleep, miss your workouts, and eat lunch and dinner out of a vending machine. 
• Traveling and not having access to the foods you love that make you feel amazing.
• And the list goes on!

So, how can you learn to navigate and bounce back from challenges and triggers? 

Keep your values front and center

By reconnecting with how you want to show up in the world, how you want to treat yourself and others, you can often gently guide yourself back.

You may be able to just remind yourself how you want to approach your self care in order to get back on track, but it may be helpful to actually physically look at your values.

You could write them down on notecards or even journal about how you feel, how you want to feel, and what values are at the core of your desire to get back to caring for yourself. 

Connect with a friend who cares

In fact, consider creating an accountability partnership and share what you’re learning about values-based self care! 

It can be as simple as sharing the values checklist and helping your friend (or friends or family) learn their own values, and then develop their own self care practices based on those values.

Then, you simply encourage one another along the way! When you’re challenged or go sideways,  you can gently remind one another that you won’t be perfect, life happens, and to simply find your way back to yourself and how you want to show up for yourself.

All of this should be about kindness, compassion, and being in the world in the way that feels natural to you.

Hopefully all of this has helped you begin to connect with a kinder and gentler way to care for your body

As we said last week: being compassionate with yourself and taking great care of yourself is how you have the energy and presence and peace to be kind to and care for others.

We’ve all heard about how moms have to take care of themselves to be available for their children, but that is true for all of us!

Kindness and love and compassion actually multiply the more we embrace them. 

So when you embrace a self-care mentality that is about love and compassion, you become that beacon of light and positivity that will attract all the goodness and love you desire and deserve!