Body Confidence: why it is so important in business
Your body confidence is your tool for making your mark in the world.
Minds and hearts alone won’t do it – we have to have a body to act through.
Think about it… we need
- eyes to see,
- ears to hear,
- a voice to speak with,
- hands to create, and help us to relate.
- We need all the underlying structure to work for us to work – lungs to breathe, stomachs to fuel us, legs to take us from place to place.
It is through our body that we experience our world. We collect and filter sensory information through our many nerve endings and the brain, and through this information, we make sense of our experience. So in an immediate sense, I hope it is immediately obvious that having a good relationship with our body will lead us to better care for it, which in turn will set us up to be a better channel for our businesses.
But there’s a little more to it than the fact that our body is our physical avatar, our way of relating to and acting in the world. And that’s this:
The body is an energetic magnet to draw what we desire towards us and through us into reality.
That’s a bold statement, isn’t it? And what does it mean?
From an energy work perspective, there are four key energetic flows to know about and work within our lives.
- Firstly, we have the manifesting flow. The manifesting flow is the ability we all have to bring our inspiration through into reality.
- The liberating flow is the ability to rise above the humdrum detail of survival and reach towards self-actualisation (think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs).
- The receiving flow is the means through which we allow ourselves to receive love, kindness, generosity, friendship and all the good things that we have coming our way.
- The giving flow is the one through which we give those same things – our love, care, kindness, empathy and support.
The body is the magnet that draws the manifesting flow into being. Think about it. Think about a recent innovation you’ve had in your business. It started as an idea – which you began to contemplate and think through, bringing it into your being through your crown chakra. You looked at it from all different angles (third eye chakra). You began to check it out with key influencers (your throat chakra). All the time it’s taking more shape.
At some point, you became committed to the idea (heart chakra). You began to take the necessary steps to put it into place (solar plexus chakra). You went to work to create it until it ‘felt’ right (sacral chakra). And finally, when everything was ready you gave birth to it (base chakra). That’s the manifesting flow – which moves fast for the simplest of ideas, and for those who’ve mastered it, and which can take months and years, even a lifetime, for things of more import.
We give birth to each new change in our lives in this way, and energetically we can make this process easier by creating a safe ground for our desires to take root and grow, just as the physical womb provides the safe environment for a foetus to grow.
If we have safe ground or home, for our desires, it is far easier to draw them in and we become a more efficient channel from inspiration to reality.
And that will make us considerably more effective in business.
So that’s one energetic and yes, an esoteric, reason to develop a truly loving and cherishing feeling towards our body – it creates a safe and loving home through which our desires can be born. We experience more alignment (which is what makes channelling our desires into reality possible), and we experience less resistance. We become better at both receiving and giving, which too makes us more efficient and effective – knowing what our boundaries need to be, setting and holding them for example; delegating where we need to; creating teams that play to individual strengths and so perform better overall. We also through our much-loved businesses move towards our own self-actualisation.
But what else? What of the more prosaic but nevertheless absolutely critical elements of how body confidence affects your business?
Well, firstly total ease in yourself creates ease in the people you are with.
We mirror and amplify each other’s state, so when you are with someone, you will know whether they are comfortable in their own skin or not. That means other people will sense whether you are too! You want your clients to relax into your expert care – whatever service or product you provide. They can only do so if YOU are relaxed in yourself, which is more fundamental than just “not currently stressed”.
Being at ease will help you become a better speaker, communicator, marketer, and deliverer of your service. Why? Because you will see an improvement in intuition (less interference to fight through), better decisions (same reason), better self-esteem, better relationships.
Being at ease with yourself is a core secret to charisma, alongside being totally present. You will become magnetic. And it will become possible to own the rooms you walk into just by being YOU. And when you can do THAT, clients will flock to you.
So, how do we do it?
The first step is to recognise how profoundly programmed we are and to PROTECT YOUR THOUGHTS.
We are bombarded with incessant messaging through the media, through peer pressure, possibly through our family, even through our literature, art, and other cultural expressions. What are the messages? Well, it seems to me I’m permanently stuck between being not enough of something and too much of something else:
Not thin enough, too vocal.
Too demanding, not fit enough.
Not pretty enough, too emotional.
I don’t fit into the small box that’s been designed for me, so I am judged for the too-muchness that spills out of its confines. I’m sure you have your own rock and a hard place too.
If you’re not sure you agree about the messaging, think about this. The apparently objectively most beautiful people in the world are regularly dressed and made up to create an image and then photoshopped like crazy afterwards. So it’s not even a REAL standard of beauty. It is, in fact, a completely unattainable one because it’s NOT real.
So, it’s time to remind yourself with diligence that these are not attainable ideals, and also that they are not YOURS.
What would YOUR beauty ideal be?
Secondly, identifying your own particular brand of judgement will help you know how to fight back against the specific voices in your head.
Think about it now… in the not enough / too much stakes, what do you tell yourself? Got some ideas? Ok then – pick one that really annoys you. Where did that originally come from?
You see it’s probably not even YOUR idea. It is almost definitely something that somebody somewhere along the line said to you and you took it on board. Whether that was a member of your family, a friend, someone at school; or picked up by comparing yourself with someone else, or overhearing a conversation, or hearing something on the radio or picking up something from TV. Was it really yours?
Babies don’t get born into the world with body shame. We pick it up along the way. Well, it’s time to stop perpetuating these self-denigrating myths. Each time we keep them going we distance ourselves from our body further. Instead of being on the same side we make an uneasy ally at best, or an enemy of our own vehicle for getting things done in the world. How silly is that?
So, we’ve set up guard against the wider societal pressure; we’ve identified our own troop of tripper-uppers.
NOW, what do we do….
Let’s just get rid of them! Let’s clear them out. Give them the old heave-ho.
There are so many ways, but one way that I’ve absolutely loved is EFT – emotional freedom technique which you might know as tapping. If you know it, you can use the prompts below to help you clear these old judgements. If you have never done it before or need a reminder, here is a link to a fantastic practitioner and his getting started advice – Rick at Thriving Now.
Tap using the fingers of one hand on the places named below; fill in the detail where I’ve put [xxxx] with the judgement you would really like to let go of…
- The side of the other hand: Even though I [xxxx], even though I really [xxxx], even though I hugely [xxxx],
- Top of the head: I’m open to the possibility that [something less judgemental and more open]
- Eyebrow: I’m willing to see if [something new or different in the situation or about you]
- The side of the eye: if just maybe [are more redeemable than you originally thought!!]
- Upper lip: [then begin to set up a positive alternative that you could credibly believe instead]
- Chin: [reaffirm the positive statement, either with new words or repeating the same]
- Collar bone: [continue to affirm the new for the rest of the places]
- Under the arm: [continue to affirm the new for the rest of the places]
- Top of the head: [affirm once more the new]
- Breathe in and out…..
The more fun and completely ridiculous you’re willing to be in your judgements the better (because they are what you are secretly thinking anyway).
THEN, having cleared out all the old rubbish, we want to make a decision to think new thoughts about ourselves.
Make a decision RIGHT NOW that when you look in the mirror you will ONLY notice what works about your body and what you love about your body and affirm it to yourself out loud. Perhaps you like the wicked sparkle in your eye. Maybe you’re grateful to your feet for walking you from appointment to appointment today. Perhaps instead of seeing a soft tummy, you think how grateful you are for the babies that soft tummy represents. Perhaps you always had a soft tummy and you realise that its part of your essential gorgeous womanhood. I don’t know what the trigger points are for you, but you do. Take care of them (literally).
And finally, the icing on the cake is that the very best way to develop your body confidence is to do more of what your body loves.
Eat the food that makes your body feel best. Sleep the sleep your body loves. Exercise the way your body most enjoys. Have the sex your body most enjoys! And do what you love. Give your body pleasure and not only does life become a whole lot more fun, but your body and you will also be best friends and it will work SOOO much better for you.
