Empowering the way you feel about yourself and your body-image, through
increasing your levels of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-worth (and altering your internal processes) all fall under the area of Personal or Self-Development.
Personally, I’ve been involved in the area of self-development for many years,
where I read the first material on the subject as a young teenager, and I really
haven’t stopped growing since then. But the area of Personal Development is
such a wide field of study, that like other wide fields of study, there are lots of ways to approach this area. If someone wants to learn public speaking, for
example, they have lots of choices. They could go and work for a company that
delivers public speaking training, or requires public speaking in order to be
successful (such as a sales job) to gain practical experience. They could take a
course or go to university and learn presentations skills from a lecturer. They
could read books on the subject, watch DVD’s, or listen to audio programs. They
could do a whole host of different things that would most probably all lead to
them gaining more knowledge about public speaking. None of these particular
examples are what’s ‘best’ for everyone and anyone, because the choice for
developing a public speaking ability is dependent upon the individuals wants,
needs and desires, and how important developing themselves to that level of
communication ability is going to be to them in their future. In many ways, this is exactly the same as with empowering your body-image.
There’s always a lot of different reasons as to why someone would want to
empower their body-image. Maybe you want to improve your body-image so that
what’s going on with you, doesn’t manifest itself in your children, and instead,
you become a more powerful role-model for them. Perhaps you want to boost
the way you feel about your body because you’re curious as to what it would be
like to live unbounded by any inhibitions you may have around your body. Maybe
you just enjoy exploring areas of yourself that you have not yet empowered,
when you’ve already come so far with many other aspects of yourself. But the
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limitations that you think are binding you, and expand yourself up to fresh and
exciting possibilities. Maybe you want to walk down the beach without worrying
what other people are thinking about you. Maybe you want to feel good about
yourself in whatever you wear (including when you’re clothes shopping). Or
maybe you want to meet that exciting new lover that’s just around the corner
(you know? The one you deserve…), just waiting for you to breakthrough your
limiting beliefs and burst through the cocoon that’s held you in bondage for so
long, so you can finally be free to spread your wings and fly as high as you want to go. Whatever your reason, the sky is the limit, so think big! The higher your
reason is for wanting to boost your body-image, the more powerful the
inspiration and motivation will be.
The most important thing to decide before you start boosting your body-image is:
What is my reason for boosting my body-image?
(What do I want to gain from boosting my body-image?)
And even though the first answer that comes to your mind will get you started,
there is a high chance that reason will transform over time as you grow through
your journey, just like the ocean is always reshaping the shoreline.
When the pinnacle of the answer to this question enters your mind, it is then
appropriate to decide the best path to take on your personal journey of discovery.
Perhaps you could take a moment to STOP, now, and write your answer to the
question below?
My main reason for boosting my body-image is:
And what I will gain from boosting my body-image is:
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You’ve become totally clear on what you’re main reason is currently, and the next step is to decide how you’re going to achieve that. There are many ways to boost
body-image and the main strategies for boosting body-image are:
By reading books, listening to audios and watching DVD’s. These are an
awesome and inexpensive way to boost body-image. There are a lot of really
good products in this area. The challenge with learning this way is that you can
develop a fairly high standard of knowledge about body-image without really
being able to do anything with it. Coming up against the issue of actually being
able to apply all of that theory you’ve learned, which is what these products are not so useful for.
By attending courses. Courses can be an excellent way to boost body-image.
Theory is combined with practical examples so you can absorb and internalize the
strategies, models and patterns. Getting along to a course will provide you with a lot more hands on experience, and you are also much more likely to meet like-minded people who have either broken through and boosted their own body-
image already (and are there for additional growth and development), or who are
in a similar place that you are at. The hill to overcome for many people with doing a course is that they usually require you to take time off work, because they
usually run for a few days (or in some cases, over the weekends), and pooling
your finances together to be able to afford to get to one is also another hurdle.
Reading information on the internet. Spending hours scouring over the huge vault of material online has positive and negative sides. There’s a lot of really helpful people out there, but there’s also a lot of misguided people too. So the
information that you will find will be all over the place, with a variety of different opinions with some saying their way is the best, or to keep away from that way.
By hiring a coach. I know a lot of really phenomenal coaches, and having your own coach is a lot like having a team-mate around who’s already been through a
similar journey as you. Who because of their unique experience with breaking
through their own challenges and boosting their own body-image (and other
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areas of life), can be a very valuable resource. They will have already helped a
range of different people breakthrough, and because they regularly coach people,
they will be able to help you create much faster results than you may otherwise
get on your own. The downside, is that coaches often get booked out quickly
because they only have a set amount of hours allocated each week to helping
people, in order to maintain their high quality of service.
Now all of these areas of development have their own positive attributes,
however in order to fully create mastery over your body-image, you will most
likely need to engage in all of these areas, and more. As time goes on, and you
begin to breakthrough your challenges and boost your body-image, you will find
that the difference between being and living in a state that’s mostly-free or
completely-free, is in your attitude towards self-development. A hungry thirst for honest self-exploration is what will allow you to boost your body-image as far as you want while still remaining humble and free from the Ego-driven self.
The most important question, at least in my mind, is in whether boosting your
body-image is important to you. If your reason for boosting your body-image is to meet that special someone, take control over the way you think (and your
thoughts), improve your relationships with friends, family and acquaintances, feel confident and sexy wherever you go and whatever you do, whether you’re at the
beach splashing about in the waves, or walking through the local shopping center
searching for a new outfit, then the truth is that boosting your body-image is
essential and invaluable. Right now, there are many options for you to boost your body-image, and although all of the options shared above have merits, if you
really want to break through, the quickest and easiest way to do that is by
deciding to work with a coach.
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