Many people don’t actually inhabit the body they live in. They live a short distance away from it. I know – I did this for years. There are many reasons why we stop listening to our precious bodies or treat them in a way that we’d never treat another person. These usually stem from our childhood.
Every day we act out a life script of how we believe our lives to be. However, for the most part we may not actually be living out the life that we truly desire. Why? Because the script we are “acting out” may have been written by other people. There are many factors which go into creating a life script for our lives. Much of it comes from learned behaviour that we pick up from our family. This is where we get our first sense of who we are and what is expected of us.
Patterns, habits and “stories” that we experienced as children play on in our body and mind long after we have outgrown our childhood days. Whilst some of these may be positive, the majority are negative and may have a huge impact on how we actually live our lives. In terms of wellbeing and body confidence we need to be able to change the early “story” of our life. We do this by questioning our own “personal rules” about how we see ourselves.
Coach yourself confident, well and fabulous!
Whenever you are aware of a self-limiting thought, pause for a moment and question if this thought is really true. Place your hand over your heart and ask yourself gently, “Is this really true?”
Whilst your mind might try to convince you that it is, your heart will always know the real truth so answer from your heart. For example, if your belief was that you weren’t as good as your sister you would say, “Is it really true from my heart that I’m not as good as my sister?”
The heart is kind, loving and tells it as it really is. Of course you’re as good. You may be different but your absolutely every bit as good. Once you get to the real truth of who you are and dismantle all of your old beliefs the result is inner peace, freedom, confidence and unlimited wellbeing and joy!
Re-script your life!
As the Founder of the Institute for Body Confidence Coaching, one of the things that I help my trainee coaches do is to learn how to create and write a new Body Script. This is vital if we are to fully embody and love our lives to the fullest.
- A great way to begin this process is to reflect on your own “story.” Write down your own body timeline. Note down all of the experiences either positive or negative that you remember at different stages of your life. Note how you felt and how these experiences impacted on you. Keep a look out for any themes or repeating patterns.
- Write down what you have learned from your experiences so far and what you are grateful for. What has your life & Body Story or journey taught you?
- Write down how you will use this teaching or create new patterns or themes. Write out your vision for how you would love your life to be and how you would like the relationship with your body to be.
- Choose the kind of words that you would love to feel and experience every day. Make positive grateful statements or affirmations for having already achieved all that you want in the “NOW” tense. For example, “I am so grateful that I am full of health and vitality!” or, “My body is my greatest friend. I trust her completely!” Read your new life script every day and allow yourself to really feel the joy of how this would feel!
- Repeat daily with enthusaism!
- If you want to go deeper with rewriting your body story, please see details in my website www.astridlonghurst.com/events
Photos by Clay Banks, Fernando Brasil on Unsplash and by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
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