Motivational Monday // Body Positivity

I was at an 18th at the weekend and I was a little nervous about going because I was wearing an outfit that was quite daring for me (and by daring I mean high-waisted trousers and a long(ish) crop top and I had a teeny amount of waist skin showing *gasp* *wow* *indecent exposure* !!!😂) but seriously, for me it was quite a different look.  I usually always choose clothes that will cover me up completely because I’m really insecure about my body. But I bought the outfit and was determined that I was going to wear it because at the start of the year I had decided that 2018 was going to be the year I embraced my body and wore the clothes I wanted rather than the clothes I felt I had to wear in order to basically hide in. But all my friends made me feel a lot more comfortable about what I was wearing with all their lovely compliments.

I had uploaded a picture to Instagram before heading out mostly because all my friends were uploading pictures of themselves too, but I didn’t 100% like the picture and was going to take it down the next day. So, the next morning I went back on Instagram and had another look at the picture. I then realised that it really wasn’t as bad as I had thought so I kept it up. As I was scrolling through my pictures on Instagram, I realised that a few years ago I’d have never posted a full body picture. Like whenever people took pictures of me with my friends, I usually liked the picture but not the way my body looked so I used to crop the picture pretty much up to my shoulders. But looking through my insta, I realised that I’ve posted a couple full body pictures now and it made me realise that I had already taken steps to be more accepting of how my body looked without even realising. As I scrolled through my pictures I sat thinking “you know, your 16 year old self would never have dreamed of posting any full body pictures and now here you are at 18 posting full body pictures without even thinking about it”. It’s not even that my body has changed that much, if anything I feel like I’ve put on a little more weight but I think I just stopped comparing myself and how I looked to other girls. I’m learning to embrace everything about myself. I’m definitely no where near close to being full of self love for my body, and there’s still plenty of times where I wish I could change a lot about myself or to work out more and cut out all junk foods, but I’m working on it. 

It’s okay to feel insecure at times, but you can’t let that insecurity control what you wear or what you post or how you think of yourself. I know it's often quite difficult to love your body, especially when the media is constantly creating all these "body expectations". But everyone truly is beautiful in their own unique ways. All our own “flaws” are much more visible to us than they are to anyone else. When you scroll through social media and see pictures of other people, your first though is never "they should lose some weight" or "their double chin is showing" etc. Most often it's thoughts of "ohh! they're so pretty!" or "they look great in that outfit!" etc. You wouldn't tear other people down so don't be so harsh on yourself.

I’m learning to try and love and embrace everything about myself and I’d really love for you all to do the same. Look past all the things you don’t like about yourself, and start focusing on all the good things about yourself, because I guarantee there’s far far more good things than “not good” things. Also remembering that appearance is definitely not everything!

I hope you all learn to love yourselves completely and don’t let these things hold you back. 

Bye for now, xo