A few years ago, I was interviewed by James and Helena of the Love Talk Show, on Sky TV, on the subject of Body Confidence. We explored a number of interesting questions.
James and Helena talked about how very attractive confidence is in relationships and particularly when you are seeking a partner. It is far more attractive than how you look.
This is, of course, not easy if you have lost confidence after a painful breakup or you have absorbed negative messages from other people (which often are not even true).
I have often been amazed by participants telling me that they don’t like the way they look when to me, they are perfectly attractive. Some have even been drop-down-dead gorgeous. Who is to say what is ugly or beautiful anyway?
What is your answer to this question?
On the programme, too, James asked: “What is the ideal body image?”
And the answer Helena gave was – “mine”.
If you find yourself squirming at the very thought of answering that question with “mine” because you’re afraid that other people will judge you and think you are too big boots – then I suggest you listen to this programme.
Dog-eat-dog Culture
Most of this goes back to the dog-eat-dog culture of our school days when it was OK for other children or teenagers to slag each other off. It was even considered cool to say cruel things about someone else, even if they weren’t true.
It happens in families too. Whilst often this is just plain unkindness, competitiveness or a way of surviving in the family, it can also come from the desire to protect the child from being too confident. The parent is afraid that their child is setting themselves up for abuse from other children if they have a too positive view of themselves.
This culture is so prevalent that it leaks out into the adult world. For many people being slagged off by other people is an everyday reality. Some of it is just good-humoured jockeying which builds resilience and a more robust confidence, but for too many people, such experiences leave deep scars. This leads to a legacy of poor confidence that will stay with you into adulthood until you find a way to put it behind you.
Investing in yourself
What I particularly like about Love Talk is the importance and value James and Helena place on investing in yourself.
It doesn’t matter how poor your body confidence is and for what reason your body confidence is low. Investing time, money and effort in boosting your confidence levels will pay dividends in the future.
They also interviewed a remarkable woman – Mary Russell who suffers from the condition of achondroplasia, also known as dwarfism. Mary was on the Channel 4 Programme “The Undateables”, and as you will see there is nothing undateable or unattractive about her in spite of her disability.
Being Undateable?
She is now also a model (as a result of being on The Undateables) and a gold medalist in the world dwarf games. She will inspire you to see yourself differently.
James and Helena are no longer hosts of the programme, so they have taken their video down. You can now watch “Body Confidence” on my Facebook page Their interview with me starts at 23.45 mins.
To view the replay please visit the Making Moves Facebook page or click below which will take you there.
If you are struggling in the field of Love, relationships and dating, I highly recommend exploring the Love Talk YouTube Channel
Here’s a bit more about the show:
Q: Does Love Talk have a mission statement or anything you’d like to share with your audience and fans?
A: I think we’ve been trying to tell people from day one, that quote that says ‘learn to love intelligently’ and this is very important because you know you cannot detach love from intelligence.
For people who don’t understand this, I’ll just explain briefly. Most people understand love as an emotional thing, as a very, almost irrational thing. People say, you know when you love someone, you can’t really choose who you love. The truth is, you can choose who you love. You can’t choose who you like! You may like someone, but you can choose not to fall in love with the person because falling in love with someone, it’s a choice. You choose to invest the time to find out more about the person – to feed that emotion – so we have been trying from day one, and this is what we’re always going to be teaching people – that you can learn to love, to love intelligently.
I think this is one of the most important things that we’ve been trying to let people into, that little secret of the past 2 years that we’ve been doing this program. I hope you enjoy the programme.
© Claire Schrader 2016
wow, interesting topic. success 🙂