Tag Archives: self confidence

Were You Trained to Hate Your Body?

Dear reader,

I’m not sure how to start this post. It is quite intimate and personal. Not only to me, but to, I believe, every woman ever. Perhaps men as well, possibly more and more so.

See, our society has trained us to hate our bodies. Trained us to live in constant striving to change our body’s shape, tan, size, colour, smell, hair, you name it, they’ve got it covered. Or like Lily Allen put in one of her lyrics “Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner”.

For me it happened as early as in elementary school gym class, where we were supposed to stand in line, from the tallest to the smallest pupil. I was somewhere in the middle, more among the taller end. And I wasn’t happy. Sometimes I wanted to be taller, sometimes smaller. I was also wearing glasses. Not attractive fashionable ones, but thick plastic pair, which would rub my nose and would look geeky. Of course other kids made fun of me. Of course I didn’t like it. Then came my foot size, which was somehow small. While most of the girls would buy their shoes at ladies compartment, I was still kept among kids trainers. And I was miserable.

Then I started doing ballet. Every single thing about ballet, is about the dancer’s body as well. I was unhappy with my arches. Unhappy with the length of my legs. Unhappy about my thighs. My red cheeks. I wanted to have a pale face and really dark hair. I wanted to be skinny. Not thin, but skinny skinny. I saw my body as my enemy, because it would gradually grow into a woman and I wanted it to remain at 50kgs. I didn’t see the swan-like neck, my big eyes, slender shoulders and long arms or my body’s amazing stretchiness. All of these didn’t count, compared to the deficiencies my body had.

When I stopped dancing, I didn’t like that my breasts were not cup C, not even a cup B. I didn’t like how my vagina looked like. I didn’t even like the shape of my fingernails.

So often have I encountered feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment. And a deep desire to look like somebody else. Perhaps a movie star. Perhaps a model from a magazine. Perhaps a girl next door with fantastic hair and perfect life. I was not comfortable being naked, not even in front of my boyfriends. Or especially not in front of them.

So I would force my body to be, look and behave the way I believed would make me happy. It followed me. I could force it to be lower than 50 kgs while still a dancer. I could force it to work hard under poor nutrition. I could control its functions and could order when to get ill and when not. My body was not my partner. It was my slave. The only thing I had full control of, in the crazy world.

And the slave failed me.

No matter how hard I pushed it, I still didn’t like it. No matter what colour I dyed my hair or how much mascara I applied, it still wasn’t good enough. Every picture of my body or face I had a look at, was lacking something.

I think I have a natural or genetic inclination to addiction, be it good or bad. So I would get excited about something new and would joyfully embrace the new habit until I would master it. Be it a habit with good or bad consequences. So I started to smoke. Tried to smoke marihuana as well, but it didn’t do much for me, so I stopped. I think I could easily become an alcoholic, so I’m staying away from it (most of the time, khmmm). I would also get excited about gluten-free food. Or veganism. Or paleo. Or buying nice clothes. Shoes. Or bags, omg, bags. Hair accessories. Facial creams, lotions, scrubs, sprays, deodorants, serums. In order to be healthy, beautiful, attractive, young, I don’t know what. Bottom line, to be or become someone who I was currently not. Change was always somewhere on the horizon, visible, but out of reach. If I wanted to become healthier, I should buy and consume chia seeds and B12 supplements. If I wanted to remain looking young, I should start using facial creams and serums, because I am over 30. If I want to be ready to go to the beach, I should shave my legs and have my bikini line done. And get rid of cellulite of course, nobody wants to look at that, do they?

Carefully following and executing the demands of our society, I realised I was trained from my childhood on, to hate my body. To constantly look at its faults instead of pros and not dare to look at its beauty. To constantly try to improve it and make it something it is not.

Guess what dear ladies out there (and men are welcomed too): how about we train ourselves to love our bodies. 

It will be a hard, but I guess a rewarding journey. I started flirting with the idea some time ago, but constantly failed, as the power of collective memory and obedience’s just too strong and my individual mental determination can’t compete there. But perhaps we could make a difference, if there were more of us. I am at the moment somewhere down Croatian coast at a nude camp with only one piece of clothes and sandals. I haven’t brought any make up, facial cream or hair accessory. I am not thinking about what or when to eat, or how much. I am far away from my business casual meetings, my high heels or my tweezers. My body is full of mosquito bites, my hair hasn’t seen a hairbrush in a week and my face is lacking moisturiser (so the media tells me and I believe it). My legs are hairy and my feet are cracked, because I’m running around barefoot all the time. But I am feeling wonderful. I’m enjoying my femininity, my strong legs which can swim very fast and very far, my round hips which give me extreme pleasure when I’m making love, my waist with the stomach capable to digest all the rubbish I have fed it, my chest which can hold breath so I can swim underwater, my long arms strong enough to do and carry all the things that come to my mind and fragile enough to remind me that I don’t have to be strong. My head, which contains my brain, my strongest weapon, my full lips, my eyebrows, ears, … all the body parts which, even though I have treated it so poorly in the past, still serve me so damn well.

So I am training myself to love the woman my body contains. This is a daring act. I am not fooling myself into believing that I will not struggle along the way. The entire beauty industry would die if more women trained themselves to take a different path. But I will at least give it a go.

So I am happy to start a training programme for us, who no longer want to obey the paradigm that we have to hate our bodies in order to fit within this society. Those of you who have asked for it, check your mailboxes, as I have answered it today. And if anyone out there would like to join and train into becoming more likeable to yourself, you are most welcome. Send me an email and let’s make our bodies our most loyal and equal partners, perhaps even friends, but definitely not slaves.

Biba

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Your body. The only one you will ever have. I chose to start treating mine as my friend.

 

Only for people with low self esteem

Dear reader,

if you are one of those who consider themselves not being self confident, not having very high self esteem and who are experiencing doubts about your skills, abilities, etc., ..

.. this post is for you. If you are fully confident you are one of the best, this post is not for you, so do not keep going.

I’m seeing enormous numbers of clients since September. Men, women, various age, different ethnical groups, social class and definitely different abilities. Before starting to work as a coach and more recently, as a therapist, I worked as a head of tutors for students with disabilities. Hence I met many students. I trained several hundreds of people in numerous groups. Let me tell you a secret.

People I met who were the most capable, special, most skilled, gifted and promising were people, whose self esteem was rather low or very low. These people were full of doubts and very often pretty insecure, quiet and shy.

Their bright minds prohibited them to see their own brilliance, which was probably the reason why others could see and recognise it.

Mass media persuade us high self esteem and self confidence is the key to success. By this we are targeting the belief that we should believe we are something special and that we can do whatever we opt to, no matter what. I think high self esteem is not the key to success and growth. Here’s why.

  • If we believe we are something special and unstoppable, but without moral values concerning the wellbeing of others, we can easily become brutal, heartless and without any internal boundaries. Some of the gangster leaders, brokers, bankers, owners of multinationals are very high in self esteem. Yet only look at what they are doing to our community.
  • Thinking we are special does not necessarily make us special. If you think you can sing, doesn’t necessarily mean you really can.
  • Being content too quickly leads to sloppiness and shallowness. If you are happy with your achievements and inputs of average quality, you are not likely to be heading down the masterpiece route.
  • Yes, it is more likely you will be noticed and yes it is more likely you will have more doors open if you are high in self esteem. Yet if that’s about it for you, people will notice soon enough. And on the long run it doesn’t pay off. You need to demonstrate some real skills then. And they do not develop through nourishing your self esteem.
  • Even if you do have the skills and are truly gifted, having high self esteem can easily drag you into the zone of comfort. This is where you stop being modest and from there you won’t be able to grow any further.

Here’s on the other hand how having low self esteem works for you:

  • You are your worst enemy and no.1 critique. If you do something that you consider good, it is probably a masterpiece.
  • People like spending time in your company, because you can actually listen and are interested in what they have to say, others than talking about yourself
  • You don’t mind being and working alone, because you do not rely on others opinion.
  • When people criticise you, you take their opinion seriously. It might paralyse you for a moment or two, but once you recover, you will improve and get better.
  • The Pareto principle is not for you. Once you go into something, you strive towards perfection. Imagine what a gem you are for the team and to your boss … Imagine having someone like you as a help. Invaluable!

The bottom line: it is much easier to climb a step up and admit to yourself that you actually deserve some of the glory when you truly worked hard for it, than to step down from the pedestal of fake successes you ascribe to yourself. So I am really concerned by this mantra of being super confident, self assured, etc. It leads us to a society of narcissistic, self-reliant individuals. And yet I’m hopeful. Because I see many people. I met and am meeting many people. Many of them are not confident, some not confident at all and have very low self esteem. And this post is a tribute to them – thank you so much for letting me be with you on your remarkable journey and for teaching me this valuable lesson I’m sharing in today’s post! You are and will make this world bright again!

Biba

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Get over yourself: You’re Not Special

Dear reader,

I see quite some number of students in one-on-one sessions. Many of them are quite miserable, especially freshmen and fresh graduates. They have problems in decision making, with procrastination, concentration, problems with relationships, bad habits or problems related to their socio-economic situation. But most of them are quite unhappy, they feel trapped, disappointed, sometimes even bored and sick of everything. They want something big to happen in their life, they are waiting for their breakthrough and somehow nothing happens. They want to dream and achieve big, but someting goes wrong. Why does everybody have a better life than I have? Everybody travels, everybody has 500 likes on facebook, everybody has better times than I have. I hate my life, my body, my friends, nothing really matters to me, they say sometimes.

Of course most of them are doing great in sessions eventually, but before the change can happen, they need to swallow a huge piece of fact most of them did not see coming. The fact that they are not special.

It hurts knowing that you actually don’t stand out of the crowd. It hurts like hell to confess that you might actually be “just” the average. The thing is that many of these young people were brought up by permissive parenting, without borders and with self esteem boosters, which was a mantra through the last 20 or 30 years. It’s neither their fault, nor their parent’s.  It was Zeitgeist. But what happens with youngsters who were told that they were perfect?  That they were special? First, they have hard time to learn respect for others. Second, they  are waiting to be served, because that’s what they are used to. Third, eventually they grow up. And as they do, they become miserable, because the big breakthrough they were waiting for, doesn’t happen. They start getting bad grades and blame their professors. They drop out of university and they blame their parents or the school system. They don’t get jobs and they blame the employers. I’m not saying it isn’t partly on other stakeholder’s shoulders, just want to illustrate that it’s always somebody else’s fault and never theirs.

In the crowd where everybody was told to be perfect and special, suddenly there isn’t anything special about being special. Realising this hurts. So what happens is that they wait, thinking “Sure, we’re not that perfect and not everybody can be”, but secretly they think: “but I am an exception.” Sorry, sadly, you’re 99% not. No, you’re not that 1 percent.

Neither am I, or is your neighbour, a friend, your boss, our president, that popstar on youtube. Most of us are just average. And there’s nothing bad about that, because that binds us; that unites us. In the world imbued with individualism and competition it is long forgotten what collectivity looks like. This might be one tiny reminder that we’re all in this together. And that’s okay. Others are miserable too. So don’t make their life even more miserable. When you suffer, look in the eyes of others. They are suffering too. We all want to be accepted, appreciated, loved. And we all deserve this. That’s actually the slogan of our fb page. We deserve this. But we are nothing special.

So as soon as you realize the bigger picture and forget about yourself a little bit, you are awarded immensely. You are able to breathe. You no longer feel pressured to perform. No longer have to compare to others. No longer have to worry whether you’ll manage. Because you can trust that you will, somehow. You have done it before and you can do it again. Only this time without this overwhelming feeling of self-care, self confidence, self image, self pride and stupid self-help industry products and inventions.

You are great. And so are others. Stop comparing, because you’re no better than they are. Or worse. We’re in this together.

frzol

None of these beans were anything special. But together they made a perfect salad.