The Confidence Guy

A couple of years ago I took a 4 hour a week shift in my local Gap store. I loved it. I broke the store’s sales records, had regular customers who scheduled their shopping for when I was working and I flirted like crazy. I was in my element.

But it was also the first time that I really saw how important body image is with regards to self-confidence.

I had great fun helping women pick out a pair of jeans, going through a few different pairs until we found ‘the one’. I was sure to give honest but positive feedback, and when a customer looked great in a pair of jeans I’d tell them. The effect of telling a woman that she looks great in a pair of jeans was instant.

Every time I did it she’d visibly change. Her posture shifted; her face shone; she became self-approving instead of self-deprecating, and her whole personality seemed to relax. The first time I saw it happen I was pretty stunned at how one little compliment had such a huge effect in their self-esteem.

I see this everywhere on the TV too. There are so many makeover shows (What Not to Wear, 10 Years Younger, How to Look Good Naked, etc, etc.) where, at the end of the show, the woman always grins broadly and her friends and family all say how confident she’s become – something the restyled woman will also enthuse about.

Research indicates that when women over 18 look at themselves in the mirror, 80% are unhappy with what they see. So I’m willing to bet that a month or two down the line those made-over women will slip back into their old way of thinking about themselves, and their self-confidence will slip backwards too. The same goes for those women who I said looked great in their new pair of jeans – they may have been buoyed temporarily but would soon have gone back to their old way of seeing themselves (until the next time they went shopping).

Those makeover shows and my role in Gap all did the same thing – to build someone’s self esteem and self-confidence by dressing up the outside and hoping that it leaks through to the inside.

I’m not about to tell you that “it’s what’s on the inside that matters”, because it’s often more complicated than that. The fact is that your relationship with your body is important - it would be stupid for me to tell you otherwise. If you have a bad body image you have a bad relationship with your body. It’s like having a bad relationship with your partner and not knowing it – you’ll be sure to suffer as a result.

And that means that your body image matters.

Your job is to get along with yourself no matter what, and that includes getting along with your body. By all means hit the gym if there’s something you’re not happy with that’s within your power to change, but don’t go too far and don’t let that be a conditional relationship. Don’t tell yourself “I’ll be happy with myself when I lose 6 pounds” or “I’ll be happy when I can get into those jeans I wore 5 years ago” – that’s making your happiness dependent on a bad relationship with your body and it won’t work.

Also feel free to enjoy a compliment, but don’t go searching for validation in order to get some relief from a bad relationship with your body.

With some clients I’ll get into this area with them, while with others it’s not an issue. What’s abundantly clear and what I’ve seen work is that a good body image starts with radical self-honesty. That means being totally honest about what you like and what you might not like so much, and it’s only with complete self-honesty that you put yourself in a place where you can make different choices. That’s how you’re able to celebrate what you like about your body and learn to be okay with what you don’t.

Let me know how your relationship with your body affects your self-confidence, and check out this neat little body image test.