By Jordan Gray | Jordan Gray Consulting
Has body confidence ever been an issue for you?
If you’re like nearly 100% of human beings, the answer to that question is probably yes.
As much as we can be self-loving and self-compassionate, everyone struggles with their relationship to some part of their bodies or physical appearance at some point in their lives.
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It’s completely normal to wish that your body was somehow more perfect. More toned. More flat. More strong. More thin. More muscly. Less chubby. Less oily. Less cellulite-y. Your wishes for it to be different don’t necessarily mean that you are correct in that thing being wrong, gross, or imperfect, it simply speaks to your desire.
Whatever your internal personal demons say to you, there’s bound to be something you wish you could shift about your appearance.
And when we feel less than great about how we look, this can very quickly get in the way of how much we allow ourselves to enjoy our sex lives.
Maybe you avoid certain positions because you feel like you look gross in them. Maybe you avoid receiving oral sex because you’re self conscious about your genitals appearance or taste. Maybe you have the lights off (or overly dimmed) in order to have your self-perceived flaws go unnoticed by your partner.
However your lack of body confidence shows up for you, it’s getting in the way of a deeply fulfilling love life. And that needs to change.
We are at our best in bed when we’re uninhibited, care-free, and confident in ourselves.
Try out the following six tips and you’ll love your body (and subsequently have better sex) in no time.
1. Listen to it
One of the fastest ways to improve your relationship to your body overall is to listen to it.
Now more than ever, we are so good at living in our heads. Technology is amazing, and can even help to improve our relationships, but it also has us often feeling like a walking head with hands. Type this text message, write that email, think, think, think your way through your career path. And the more we honour our heads over our bodies, the more our bodies start feeling like chronically ignored lovers.
The first step in your process of reconnecting with your body is allowing yourself to listen to the message it has to tell you.
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Maybe you have an ache in a part of your body that has been hurting for months and you need to book an appointment with a massage therapist, chiropractor, or physiotherapist. Maybe you don’t get hard/wet with your partner in bed because there’s some truth that needs to be addressed or spoken out loud that you’ve become really good at burying deep down in your body.
Listen to your body. It is wise. It wants you to know what it wants you to know.
Simply by taking the step of listening to it, it will start to relax, feel more important and heard, and it will begin to give you it’s gifts that it can only give you when it is highly functioning and happy.
2. Every time you catch yourself criticizing it, seek out three things that you love about your body
We all criticize our physical appearance in some small (or large) way.
First, every time you catch yourself insulting your body/appearance, don’t beat yourself up for noticing. Be grateful that you noticed at all because, remember, that’s a good thing that you’re aware of your unhelpful thought patterns.
Then, to counteract some of the negativity that you’ve thrown at yourself, immediately think of three things that you love and are grateful for about your body.
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This practice will take time to become proficient at. It’s certainly easier said than done. And it might feel cheesy when you’re doing it. But it will be so beneficial in helping you love your body. And you’ll remember all of the things that – “Oh yeah!” – you actually love about how you look.
3. Compliment and appreciate other bodies
When we criticize other people’s physical appearance (in our minds or out loud), we subconsciously criticize ourselves as well.
Criticizing others works against us in two ways… (1) because everything to do with others is a projection of our own internal world, we unknowingly bring ourselves down when we tear down others, and (2) we feel safe in assuming that if we are judgmental and negative about others, then they must be doing the same thing to us in their minds or in their words. So nip it in the bud by going in the opposite direction.
Compliment and appreciate other people’s physical appearance (in your mind and out loud when appropriate) and you and they will both feel better.
4. Move
Remember that “living in your head” thing I mentioned earlier in the article? Well, this is another fantastic way to reawaken your relationship to your body. Move it!
Do anything that feels fun, compelling, and that gets you into your body. Go dancing, walk, play volleyball, hire a boxing instructor to teach you how to fight. Whatever you find fun, do that.
Anything you believe will make you happy becomes an idol to which you sacrifice happiness to.
The nature of relationship is not getting from – but giving to and receiving in like kind.
If you withhold and withdraw your presence to a set of conditions that must be met or sought in order to then ‘come out to share and play’ – then you set the conditions of your own loss of worth and connection by what you then extend to others.
Everything has all of the meaning you give it. But in fear we gave meanings that protected or hid the fear so as to ‘survive’ an intolerable situation. But you are free to look on what fear made and release it to let love in – instead of trying to overcome, mask or impose over an unlovely world, body or relationship FROM a point of separation and control – that is the condition in which love’s honesty is denied while making gratification upon fantasy associations.
“Behold I make all things new!” is the Nature of a truly shared existence. The recognition of Self in the Other is natural to the release of what you are NOT. Meeting what we are NOT without being triggered into shame or blame is of a genuine desire for true being – and not any self-driven sense of ‘better’ – though of course there is always an expansion of discovery of the More of Who You Truly Are – but this is not a devaluation of who you believed and experienced yourself to be.
Intimacy of a true fulfilment cometh when ye thinketh NOT – so take NO thought for yourself – but behold the lover in whom is your delight. Can you let love in? Not if you are seeking gratifications for a fantasy – but we can only ever accept or love ourself as we are – by no longer rejecting or denying who we fear or hate to be.
All communication is aligned true in a real relationship – but of course all blocks to such a relational intimacy arise to be recognized and released. The movement of love is a wholeness of being – that is ‘being with’. You are never truly in anything or anywhere else – but the mind of fear is associated with the persistence of a fantasy given power over true – and thus afraid of, and blind to the true of others and of self.
Put first things first and everything else aligns. If there was a ‘how to love’ there would be a condition that love cannot embrace that some process must transform to then become worthy. I hold this is BACKWARDS – and its thinking is a world in which everything is backwards!
Feel and know within instead of imposing thought from a sense of ‘without’. You are love – but must extend this to remember.
The ‘best sex’ is completely free of any idea of ‘sex’ – for no thought comes between that which moves you both as one. The body in that sense, falls away and … words cannot say. Even “I love you!” will generate a separation if the mind identifies in saying it – and yet when nothing is given the power to interrupt – everything is accepted as of the same purpose or movement of being. Share life and know its worth. Let love move as it will – given freedom to be.
Connection is never gotten outside – but can be extended and reflected and shared as thought, word and deed. Such is the wonder of any relationship re-cognized.