How to Deal With a Body Image You Are Not Satisfied With

We live in a society today that teaches us the correct body image. Actually, there is no such thing as the correct body image, just like there is no such thing as a correct smile. If you think your body image is incorrect for you, you might look at it from a different perspective. It may be easier to change how you interpret your body image than going through a torturous process to reach the right weight, right looks or the right posture. This article will explore how the state of mind that you are in determines how you judge yourself.

Judgments are usually based on and shaped by what other people think. When we have the ability to not be limited to the cage of other people's judgments, we may find the ability to have unconditional love. Often, when we think of love, we think of loving other people. Although that is valuable in our life, we need to love ourself unconditionally. That means that no matter what you think other people think about you, you have to go deep enough to be free from judgments.

The way you know that freedom is to look at your breath. All of your worries, stress, guilt and fears affect your breathing. If you find that state of mind where your breath flows through you without any resistance, you will be free of judgments. I call this the Easy Breath. The reason is that this breath is not limited by your mind. It creates a perspective that allows you to see things without any judgments, without any shoulds, but to accept just as it is.

When it comes to your own body image, can you see it with unconditional love? You may think this is impossible, but look at your focus. Your focus is on the thought, your interpretation and sometimes how other people would interpret you. This may seem like a giant step, to go beyond your thoughts, but it is as easy as just focusing on your breath.

Look at our society today; there are thousands of diet clinics and techniques to help you attain the body image that you want. These are great tools and can definitely help you, but you have to look at how you use external resources. When you are in a clear state of mind, free from anxiety or disappointment of how you see yourself, you will have a better ability to tap inner resources to help you use external resources. Approaching them with self-doubt, the attitude "I just can't do this," or any negative self-judgment means these external resources will not be as effective.

The first step of any path to improve yourself has to be the state of mind that you start from. This path may not be so easy, but dealing with your own self-image in your mind could be the easiest thing on this path. Most people think that is an impossible task to control, but it is your own resistance that makes it difficult.

Think of someone that loves you unconditionally and imagine them accepting you exactly as you are. Now since you imagined that, your mind created that experience. & show that love to yourself. When you accept that love, notice your breath. Relax so your breath effortlessly floats through you.

Practice this before you go to sleep and upon awakening, do this imagery for about 10 days & this will become a useful habit. Then, when you need that unconditional love for yourself, just take an Easy Breath and feel loved.

The solution to the question of how to deal with a body image you are not satisfied with is simple; look at yourself from an unconditional, loving perspective and do not judge yourself.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Deal-With-a-Body-Image-You-Are-Not-Satisfied-With&id=9347448

5 Biases You Probably Have (Even If You Think You Don't)

... including why we favor more attractive people.

In cognitive psychology, there is a concept known as the "better-than-average" effect.

The basic idea of an "average" implies that 50% of people will be below average, and 50% will be above. However, when you ask people if they're below or above average when it comes to any particular skill (e.g., driving, singing), far more people will rate themselves as above average than the 50% that you might expect.

Even when we know about such cognitive biases, we often think of ourselves as being immune to them: Other people might fall into that trap, we think, but I'm too smart for that.

To optimize your thinking, let's examine those cognitive biases to which you believe you are immune. Here are 4 more: 

1. Treating more attractive people better. 

Attractive people tend to get evaluated more positively than less attractive people. If you're in a position to hire a new employee or choose a realtor or doctor, this is a good bias to be aware of. Also, since weight stigma remains very prevalent in our culture, it's useful to be aware if you're attributing any negative judgments to someone who is overweight—e.g., thinking they might be lazy. Another example might be the stereotype that someone who has tattoos might be unreliable. 

The same principle applies to treating people who are more similar to you more favorably. Even when we're aware that this general bias exists, we often don't notice when it plays out in our lives—e.g., in a class, you might find study groups organizing themselves by ethnicity or age, or in your neighborhood, you might have a friendlier relationship with neighbors who are more similar to you than those who are different.

2. Thinking bad things won't happen to you.

You might know the statistics on how many people will get cancer during their lifetime, yet still think that your personal chance of contracting it is much lower. The key is recognizing your "average" vulnerability—to the extent that it's useful and motivates positive behaviors, such as getting a pap smear, carrying appropriate health insurance, wearing a seat belt, and using sun protection. Outside of the health sphere, similar examples include taking basic precautions to secure your home or prevent your stuff getting stolen. 

3. Vulnerability to marketing and sales techniques. 

Most of us know about the common sales and marketing techniques used by brands and salespeople. For example, "upsells" that get us to pay more for unneeded extras; credit cards and loyalty programs that use rewards and bonus offers to get people to spend more than they usually would; free trials that you don't get around to cancelling; and, in stores, putting the most expensive brands at eye level.

Which types of offers do you participate in but kid yourself that you're not getting influenced by sales and marketing techniques? There may be some strategies that don't cause you to change your thinking or behavior, but you need to be able to recognize when you are being influenced. 

3. Our bias toward sticking to doing the same thing. 

The more familiar something is, the more we tend to prefer it. When do you fail to recognize that you like something mostly because you're familiar with it—e.g., wearing black every day just because you're used to it.

4. Seeing people we're in love with through rose-tinted glasses. 

When you're in a committed relationship, it's generally useful to see the best in your spouse or partner. It helps keep us happy in the relationship by convincing us that we made a good choice of partner, and it allows us to give our partner a break when they screw up—e.g., they do something stupid but we continue to see them as generally smart.

However, there can be times where we fail to recognize our partner's shortcomings when it would be useful to do so—e.g., you might allow them to talk you into something financially risky or unethical.  

At the dating stage, love and lust can blind us as well, to the extent that we make a poor choice when a new partner's negative qualities come to the surface—e.g., your partner is a superficially charming narcissist. When would it be useful to you to recognize that your partner does have a weakness in a particular area—e.g., when they overestimate their driving abilities and drive too quickly when your entire family is in the car.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201512/5-biases-you-probably-have-even-if-you-think-you-dont