How to love your body and accept yourself with all the shortcomings. Learning to love your appearance: practical tips How to accept yourself and love your body

A mirror is a special psychological tool that allows us to see ourselves through the eyes of another person. Stand in front of the reflection and instead of traditionally starting to notice all the shortcomings, concentrate on those parts of the body that you really really like about yourself. Appreciate your merits, consider them carefully, admire them and learn to be proud and admire these advantages.

Write down compliments

Every day, find an excuse to give yourself at least three compliments. At the same time, remember everything pleasant, kind, exciting that you have heard addressed to you in recent years. You can even write these phrases down (on your phone or notepad, on sticky notes, red lipstick on the mirror...), and when you feel your self-esteem drop or feel uncomfortable just thinking about your body, read them aloud. Great positive attitude.

Get undressed!

The simplest exercise is to walk half-naked around the house more often. For example, in underwear, a swimsuit or shorts and a crop top for 7-10 days in a row. This way you get used to your half-naked look and worry less about figure flaws. After such frank walks around the apartment, it will be much easier to put on a light dress on the street or on a crowded beach.

Go for a massage

Some women, having a strong complex, do not allow a man to touch certain parts of the body in moments of intimacy, hide them or completely avoid new contacts. Pleasant training - professional massage, when the other person touches the body insinuatingly, with special attention. This can be another right step to the fact that your self-esteem will begin to change.

Remember yourself in the past

Often, looking at photographs taken several years ago, we catch ourselves thinking that we were not only younger, but also more beautiful, happier ... Wait a minute! Now think about how at that very time they were complexing because of their own appearance. This will help you better understand your real self and accept your figure here and now.

Curb your imagination

Learn to notice the moment when negative thoughts about the body are just beginning to creep in, and quickly cut them off in their infancy. The next step is to try to change your own assessment. Are you unhappy with having small breasts? But after all, this circumstance at one time did not prevent you from having an affair with the desired man. Annoyed by a hump on your nose? Think how many times your spouse has admired your facial features! A lot of negative feelings arise under the influence of stereotypes that are not confirmed in practice.

Learn to trust

Criticism in her address may mean that a woman takes too seriously what others think of her. Including old grievances speak in her - perhaps she experienced humiliation in childhood or adolescence and is still afraid of being in an indecent, uncomfortable situation. Listen to the opinion of those who care about you, who love you and will not hurt you. Convince yourself that you have nothing to prove to outsiders.

We cannot love and be loved until we learn to accept ourselves. It's not easy to remove the fake masks, accept loved ones and find those who appreciate us for who we are. How to learn to love yourself or return this love if it was lost?

Mental state is a part of our health, no less important than physical state. Anxiety, fears, a constant desire to prove something to yourself and others - this is a false facade that hides problems. These problems can and should be solved in order to finally give yourself the opportunity to simply live, without envy and without worrying in vain, constantly feeling joy inside yourself as an endless source of energy.

The search for the meaning of life is one of the signs that not everything is in order. For a harmonious person, meaning appears by itself - from feelings, sensations and experiences. But inner harmony will not arise by itself. The basis for it can either be laid down in childhood or developed already in adulthood. The second option will require conscious effort.

In childhood, our emotions, desires and feelings are most vivid and pure. During this period, the foundation of all future life is formed. However, during these years we are not independent: we depend on parents, relatives, educators and older comrades. If a child was denied support and love, if he did not have an outlet, there was no way out for negative emotions - and in childhood everything is very bright, even pain - then such an onslaught on the child's "I" will lead to the appearance of protective mechanisms of the psyche. A strong but unreal "I" is formed, with which the child hides from the world.

The real "I" remains lonely and unappreciated by anyone, which gives rise to many internal conflicts.

Having lost his "I" behind a pile of masks, a person begins to prove to himself and others the significance of a fake, fake self in every possible way. At the same time, the real "I" remains lonely and unappreciated by anyone, which gives rise to many internal conflicts. Therefore, external success is often associated with severe internal pain. The problem is aggravated by the fact that even having subjugated those around him, having created a seemingly favorable environment around him, a person with a true “I” driven inside will not be able to get real feelings from others until he loves himself.

The ability to feel, love and accept yourself is the basis that allows you to subsequently love someone else and accept love from others. Without accepting ourselves, we block the source of our own feelings, replacing them with gray fakes. As a result, we destroy both our own personality and the personality of those around us. At the same time, we feel pain all the time, but it is driven inside, and then makes us hurt others. This circle is endless, and there is only one way out of it - love.

To love is to allow yourself to be yourself. Remove false identities, abandon the protection built up over the years, accept your loved ones, find those who value you, and not your masks. Reclaiming love is no easy task. But the result is worth any effort. I propose to do an exercise from bodily therapy, which will help you learn to respect and love yourself and your body. This is a practice based on the exercises of Alexander Lowen.

1. START VALUE YOUR BODY

Divide a sheet of paper in half to make two columns. On one side, list 20 things you value about your body: long neck, strong shoulders, thick hair, good digestion, strong arms, big breasts, good eyesight, great coordination, dainty fingers, etc. If you can't list 20, write ten. If this is a lot, then write five. And if it is difficult to list at least five, find at least two features (but no less). Once you've done that, put in the other column just one thing you don't like about your body. Take a look at your list. And allow yourself to appreciate the body more than to condemn.

2. EXHAUST NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

If you find it difficult to create such a list, make a positive statement about your body, even if it seems strange: for example, "I love my stomach." Then write down each critical statement to the contrary until you exhaust all negative thoughts. Once you've done that, repeat the positive statement and try adding another one to it.

3. REOPEN YOUR BODY

Close your eyes and carefully move your thoughts through the body from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Is there a part you skipped too fast? Is there anything you have rejected and not included in your body image? Is there an area that you don't feel, perhaps not even knowing that you have rejected it? Is there anything that you don't like and call disgusting or unpleasant? Pay attention to this area. Does it have a distinctive feature: color, sound, sight, temperature, structure, density, tension, or any other sensations?

4. FILL YOURSELF WITH LOVE

Now, with each breath, fill your heart with energy from whatever sacred source you believe in. With each exhalation, direct love from the heart into the rejected or insensitive area. Breathe until you notice a change. Do you feel like you have softened? Do you have compassion for yourself? Has the color, quality, image, or feel of the rejected area changed? Try to repeat the exercise every day for a week. To consolidate the result, it is desirable to do the exercise for 40 days without interruption.

How cleverly those who control mass culture make women compare their bodies with the ideal forms of the next standard from a glossy cover! But what about everyone else whose parameters stubbornly refuse to fit into the model format?

Who will teach you to accept and love yourself the way nature created them? Find out what psychologists advise about the right attitude towards yourself and your body on the site about medicine, health and beauty - MedAboutMe.

What are women afraid of, meticulously looking at themselves in the mirror? To see a bad, in their opinion, figure.

Why bad? Yes, because there is no such woman on earth, whose complexion perfectly repeats the notorious "hours": 90-60-90. There are no such beauties among earthly beauties, and never have been. Even the famous "Greek" standard of the ideal female figure Venus de Milo has other volumes:

chest - 86 cm; waist - 69 cm; hips - 93 cm. And this is with a height of 164 cm, which falls short of the current standards on the podium by 15-20 centimeters.

Yes, Venus would simply not be allowed to the podium!

Moreover, not a single modern top model has the “gold standard” of the 90-60-90 format.

So why do ladies with such tenacity, worthy of a better use, try to squeeze their body into the parameters accepted in society? Who came up with this notorious standard?

Perhaps the one who said that "natural" women are no longer in fashion and no one needs them. Or maybe another who wished to "save a woman from nature"?

And now millions of beauties are making their own verdict: the figure is bad, the body is no good. Yes full! Both your figure and your body are not bad, but frightened by imposed standards, layers of stereotypes and androgynous models that resemble clothes hangers come to life.

Drive away your fears. The same - mannequins and hangers, but people are always different. Incredibly stylish and strikingly different from all other fashionistas in her sense of style, Iris Apfel is convinced that culture needs to be saved if "there is one standard of beauty in society."

Variety of beauty

The word "diversity" (diversity), in relation to the beauty of man, has always been. Ideas about her were constantly changing.

Egyptian leanness and long legs were replaced by proportional harmony and physical perfection of the dense bodies of Greek and Roman women.
They were replaced by the "chicken" thinness and deathly pallor of the Middle Ages.
The languid, large-browed beauties were replaced by curly, puffy charmers from the paintings of Titian.
The matrons, full of health and natural beauty, were pushed aside by graceful ladies with no blush and a wasp waist.
Then came the era of thinness and slenderness.
Decadence at the beginning of the twentieth century extolled "nervous" pallor, bruising under the eyes, black clothes.
The figure of a teenage girl with barely noticeable female features is elevated to the rank of an ideal. Arms and legs with twigs, anorexic models fall on the catwalks, and designers advise clothes two sizes smaller as a diet for weight loss.

"Fashion swing" swings, ignoring the natural beauty of the body. What should an ordinary woman do, who does not look like a skeleton and does not have a two-meter height?

Everything is simple. You need to stop being afraid of your body, rejoice at the presence of breasts and hips, accept and love your uniqueness the way nature created it. The main thing is to stop listening to those who force you to compare yourself with a glossy standard, without explaining why, in fact, this is necessary.

Women have achieved a lot: they fly into space, make scientific discoveries, sit in parliament, successfully run business, set world records, but there is still a “fly in the ointment” in all this splendor: dissatisfaction with one’s own body.

Eternal discomfort due to insufficient or excessive volume, the presence of too large or small breasts and extra centimeters at the waist turns life into an endless tedious race to compete with another it-diva.

So is there a way to understand and accept yourself without participating in collective hysterical attempts to drive your body into standard stamping?

There is. And this method is simple, inexpensive, but has the first degree of difficulty in saving the "ordinary" body from stereotyped clichés. The difficulty lies in self-knowledge and self-acceptance. The effectiveness of any diet is in mental work and self-approval.

What will be required?

First, understand:

nature did not provide us with a ready-made ideal figure, but your unique body;
inherited habits you received from your parents: the tendency (or lack thereof) to be overweight, the habit of eating certain foods and in a certain way.

Secondly, to realize that all the work to realize the dream of harmony with your own body will have to be done by yourself. How to make peace with your body?

Do a “reboot” in your own head and understand the following:

most of what you hear, see or read is informational spam that does not require attention;
one of the clear achievements of modern girls is that their incomes are steadily growing, reducing the distance with men, so women are becoming the object of close attention of beauty companies as potential consumers of beauty products;
"beauty agitators" will go to any lengths to scare women with the irreversible consequences of environmental influences, stress and physical inactivity on health and beauty, and then promise an "elixir of youth" to maintain ideal face and body shapes;
the impeccable style and eternal youth of the editors of the "gloss", of course, delights, but the advice to follow the promoted norms of face and body care is not always applicable in many life situations in which a modern woman finds herself;
women are obsessively instilled with the need to immediately take all the proposed measures in order to squeeze their harmoniously built body of non-model parameters into the recommended format for the “hanger”;
the constant "pulling by the ears" to uniformity for all women, reminiscent of a special task to clone "Barbie";
women do not have time to take a critical look at their body - they are offered "those legs and breasts from the cover."
neither your body nor Monica Bellucci's forms meet the unified standard of beauty.

Ancient wisdom says that the road of any length begins with the first step. Take this step, stop being complex because of your appearance, accept what is given to you by nature, and do not pay attention to those who are trying to interfere with you. Nature tried and created your unique image as it is, and you need to learn to accept and love yourself.

Learn to understand the difference between the imposed desire to meet the standard from the cover and the need to really help your body to exist worthy.

Beautiful pictures with long-legged beauties, magical stories about how your life will change after you achieve a “wasp” waist, elegant texts about the life of lovely creatures - all this is nothing more than a way to make money on your complexes. No one denies the benefits of exercising in the gym, but it’s definitely not worth trying to achieve a perfect copy with the figure of a beauty from a magazine.

By the way, three cakes a day under the slogan “I love myself like this!” and the lack of a healthy lifestyle is a sign of defeat.

Remember that you have a body.

Hardworking, sensitive, yours. Study it. Preferably at home and in front of a mirror. Only without fainting from the fact that "not the standard." Take a look at your body from the side. You cannot deny everything. Undoubtedly, you like something more than anything else: arms, chest, waist. So admire them in the mirror.

Do you want the whole body to please you? Then make at least minimal effort to make it appeal to you. You have already received your body and there will be no other. You need to live in peace with him, and not declare war and issue ultimatums. It's better to improve what you have. Only without fanaticism. The process of “correcting nature” and the pursuit of eternal youth sometimes leads to irreversible consequences.

Stop being sad because your unique body is not comparable to the forms of a fitness trainer. A coach's job is to look like a mannequin in a sporting goods store, otherwise no one will come to him for training.

Do not stuff your body with burger chips, do not torture it with diet pills, start with a balance in nutrition and normal physical activity. Walking to work and a balanced diet are encouraged.

Remember that you are not engaged in extreme survival experiments, but listen carefully to how the body reacts to your care. You must learn to feel when innovations are pleasant to him, and when to reduce the load. Learn to enjoy even the smallest change. The psychological atmosphere also needs to be created by yourself.

body to help

What can calm any person? Care, attention and love. So why are you depriving your body of it?

Try to be careful with it. Take care for yourself. Just don't forget that this is not a new game called "Today, according to the plan, stroke your hands, and tomorrow your shoulders." Everything that you start doing for yourself and your body should bring pleasure. Combine business with pleasure, that is, your favorite food in moderation, and physical activity is not a burden.

Try to understand how your body likes to rest. For example, what kind of music will make you forget about fatigue. Body signals are very important. Do you remember the famous: "Ask your heart!". You will see, the effect will be amazing.

Listen to your body and it will answer you. Inner harmony will immediately manifest itself outwardly.

So live in harmony with her, not comparing yourself with anyone - neither with friends, nor with dolls, without looking back at the crowds of magazine beauties, whose beauty depends on the art of makeup artists, hairdressers and Photoshop experts.

The more fears left behind, the better.

By respecting yourself and your body, you will practice self-improvement with pleasure.

You can talk about the beauty of the body and share your concern with loved ones, and even better, trust the compliments that you are told more often.

Expert comment

It is difficult to love the body, constantly comparing yourself with others, and, moreover, striving to be like someone else, or chasing the standards of beauty. The first thing that is important to do is stop evaluating yourself from this position and remove attention from external reference points. This is a big part of success. Focus only on yourself and your body as if you alone exist in this world.

Start looking at yourself in the mirror with interest, focusing longer on those parts of the body that you especially like about yourself. Choose clothes of those styles and colors that will emphasize the advantages and hide the flaws. Choose a fabric that will be pleasant to your skin. And every time you pass a mirror, look at yourself and note how beautiful you look! Feel at this moment how your shoulders straighten, your walk becomes easier, and you smile to yourself with your whole body. Make sure that your reflection in the mirror pleases you.

If you think you need help from a beautician, nutritionist, fitness instructor, or plastic surgeon, take advantage of this. Do not limit yourself to one positive attitude and affirmations on the topic “I am beautiful”, because in the subconscious people rarely believe in changes only from spoken phrases. But in this matter it is important not to overdo it and make changes to what really worries you.

The body needs touch. Always take care of your body and appearance, without waiting for the moment when you get in shape or change something in yourself.

Give thanks to the body - after all, it is it that every day gives you the opportunity to move, eat, do your favorite things, etc. Accept compliments with pleasure and dignity!

If all else fails and you continue to be dissatisfied with your appearance, ask yourself the question: “What is really bothering me?”. Is it really your figure, or perhaps it is fear of the opinions of others? In the depths of dissatisfaction with oneself often lies the topic of self-esteem, which cannot be dealt with alone. Feel free to ask a specialist for help. No amount of plastic surgery, salon visits and super diets will make your self-esteem adequate. This process is reversed - it is internal changes that lead us to external changes.

How amazing life is. You look at a person and you see how beautiful he is. A man, for example, a woman, sees himself quite differently. He considers himself ugly, fat, worst of all.

This is how my clients tell me about themselves. Whatever words they call themselves, as soon as they do not scold, with what they do not compare, and what they do not blame! And to convince them otherwise is simply useless. They believe in what they say. And faith, apparently, creates, not only miracles.

If there is a problem of excess weight, then, as a rule, there is a problem with body image - self-perception. Or rather, the rejection of yourself and your body as it is. With all the ensuing consequences. Magazines, television and social networks are full of photographs that are called to strive for: there will be such a body, which means there will be a happy life!

And full women want this happy life, that is, a slender, beautiful body at any cost, they want the attention of men, respect from loved ones. And here's what they do for it. They torture and torture their body with diets, pills, exercise equipment. They go on a diet, as a rule, for the company, so it is easier to endure hardships and restrictions.

Then all the enthusiasm fades away. But in my head there is a picture of what you need to become at all costs. And now everything is not right, everything is wrong, not life, but a draft.

Only the body from all these "courtships" for some reason does not become more beautiful. Because initially it is not loved. And with the unloved and the treatment accordingly.

I explain this whole epic in detail to my clients. Thus, gradually they come to understand and realize that the body needs love and acceptance in the form in which it is now. It's not her fault that it looks like this. For many years it has served faithfully, withstands all experiments and at the same time, regularly wears it on the ground, allowing you to do all this with it. And already thus, deserves care, respect and love.

By working with the image of the body, we gradually come to changes. But we do not change the body (it itself changes in the process), but our attitude towards it, our thinking, behavior. Only after accepting it in the form it is at the moment, ceasing to demand magical transformations from the body, you can get the desired result.

Feeling the love of his mistress, the body will want to reciprocate. Perhaps it will stop at weight gain and check if this is really love. And perhaps he will immediately begin to let go of extra kilos as unnecessary.

After all, when you are loved the way you are, you want to give your love in return, show care, work miracles, move mountains, etc. The body is alive and feels everything. While you will scour him, blame, find fault and torment - there can be no talk of any harmony. It will resist and defend its borders.

My clients still manage to love and accept themselves. I don't know if it will work for you. One client, a successful business woman, after many unsuccessful attempts to lose weight, applied with a request to put her body in order.

The weekly sessions took several months, during which we removed many psychological anchors, and much was discarded. Special techniques of acceptance, meditation and many other psychological tools were needed for an effective result.

Huge internal work gave new resources, and the client's life began to change slowly. At some point, she decided to stop and just live in the already created changes. A few months later she wrote to me that her life had changed dramatically!

She enrolled in 2 sports clubs at once, and in one of them she won the competition and became the queen of the hall! Her relationships with men have intensified, her personal life has improved, and her business has acquired new development prospects!

She is full of strength, energy, and most importantly, she has lost 10 kg of weight unnoticed by herself. But this is no longer an end in itself for her, but a side effect of mutual love for herself and her body.

This is a big job, with full emotional dedication and involvement, meditations and techniques, awareness and insights. But what amazing results this work gives, how much joy and satisfaction happy women experience. How their lives are changing right before our eyes! Still, faith works wonders!

Read more about the body, food and weight on my pages in social networks.

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