Learning to love yourself instead of listening to your inner critic

Learning to love yourself instead of listening to your inner critic is something if you have suffered with lack of self confidence throughout your life then it is down to work and persistence to keep your positive mindset going.

It is all about you looking at yourself differently. One way of doing this is to find a picture of yourself or go through your memory of a time when you did feel good about yourself and focus on that image. 

If there is some part of yourself that you really don't like then jot it down on a notepad, this is where keeping journal comes in handy and then set goals of how you can remind yourself of that image where you were happy about yourself as if that image is standing in front of you, going through what you liked about this girl or boy you once were in this image and what changes you can make to be like that girl again. 

Go through things you do like about yourself and highlight them, and create a vision board of what you would like to look like and go through habits that you do currently that you can change so they can become positive feel good habits. 

If for example when I was a kid to a teenager, I would worry about the colour of my teeth because I did drink a lot of tea that can stain your teeth, and it did make me feel self conscious. In seeking help and advice from the dentist, I began to drink less tea, get my teeth cleaned by the dentist regularly and use whitening toothpaste and that really helped and I did feel much better about myself when I made this change. 

At the moment I have been unhappy with my size due to putting weight on during lockdown, which I know many have said this too, so I now do as I did before lockdown, exercise daily by walking and doing strength training indoors with dumbbells and have started to feel better about myself again by introducing this to my life once again.  

Check out my blog site: Sports and fitness coaching as I write about my fitness and sports I regularly do and have given some of my own tips and advice including hacks that can save you time and money when doing fitness training:

http://sportsandfitnesscoaching.com 

What you need to remember is that as much as you want perfection in your life, everyone's perception of being perfect is different and everyone has insecurities or have experience having an insecurity and that noone is perfect. 

If it makes you upset looking at images on Instagram for example, then take it off your phone or device and don't look at it if it doesn't make you feel good. 

Try not to compare yourself, I have been guilty of this and you can't really compare because everyone is different and so just focus on you and what makes you happy, and makes you feel good when you look at yourself. 

Give yourself a makeover and practice Self-care as this can make such a difference to how you feel that it can become a ritual or positive habit that brings you so much joy that it then becomes second nature and can shut the inner critic up for once. 

You just need to focus on you and be kinder to yourself rather than constantly criticizing yourself. 

I wish you well and please stay safe, and if you have any thoughts about this blog that you would like to share then please do leave a comment below. 

Many thanks for reading, 

Carrie X

  

How I would love a beach body

Hello and welcome to another Building Self Confidence blog. Today I am talking about how I would love a beach body.

There was a time I was super slim, but still had insecurities with wearing a bikini, as it means dehairing and I don't mind saying I do have a lot of hair growth that does get removed on a regular basis, but then I find my skin can get itchy and have red spots on my skin from shaving too much.

I would love to be able to strip off without feeling so self conscious, but I just can't do it, and as I have gotten older keeping the weight off has become a lot more difficult compared to when I was younger, and even then I thought I was plump, but looking back on photos from my passed, I wasn't plump at all and it was all in my head.

A lot of feeling self loath is in the mind and everyone has qualities and things they don't like about themselves, but that is to do with them and not necessary how other people see you.

I do exercise, I walk a lot and train indoors. I have joined gyms but I do find them quite expensive, and have gone to pay as you go gyms but now they are all closed I have had to use alternative methods to stay fit and healthy.

Looking after myself including my mental health does take a lot of work at times, but I try by going over what I am thankful for, what I do love about myself and what I bring to life, and I am more of less a positive person, I just need to be kinder to myself at times, and be grateful that I do have good working eyes, ears, mouth and nose. I am thankful that I have all my limbs and can walk or run, so sometimes going through those things helps me to see it isn't really about not having a beach body, but how I feel about myself and what I am willing to change to help further my confidence about myself.

Many thanks for reading,


Carrie X

Building your kids confidence

Watching my son who is 6 years old, takes me back to when I was a kid. He seems to be more of a daredevil than me, as today he climbed a very high up climbing frame in one of our local parks, which he has never done before, and I thought wow, where did he find the confidence to do that?

As a parent I have come to realise that sometimes kids have to find the confidence to do things on their own, rather than being pushed to do things.

I as a kid would have never attempted to climb such a high up climbing frame, as I was a bit of a scaredy cat as a kid, and never did monkey bars as I was fearful of not being able to hold on, and falling off.

However there was a time when I loved going on rollercoasters and was never really scared until I got older, and it was caused by having a bad experience on a ride in Jersey, where I was being wized up in the air and couldn't breathe because it was so windy and because of that I become fearful on going on fast and high rides.

Since Henry, my son came into the world I have had to curve in my lack of self confidence because I don't want my fears to be passed on to him, and I love the fact that he is a lot more confident at his age. I feel sometimes to get the best out of life you do, have to do things that you would never have dreamed of doing, and that means taking risks.

As soon as they see you are being anxious about something can cause them to be aswell, so I let Henry try different things now when playing outside and unlike last year when I had him on reins when we would go anywhere, I now have the confidence of walking with him without reins and he will stay by my side most of the time.

Encouraging and rewarding my son works a treat and helps build his confidence even more.

You have to allow them space for them to explore and if they do fall or not confident then give them comfort, but praise them for trying.

Never put too much pressure on your kids, because often, learning from my own experience being a mum, is that they will just stop or do the opposite to what you tell them to do.

If you would like to read more of my experience of being a parent, then please check out my 3 books published below, and my WordPress blogs, where I specifically write about my life as a parent.

• The Parenting Adventures, Pregnancy to the first 9 months
• The Parenting Adventures, Baby to Toddler years: You are not alone
• Parenting EBook: Welcoming your baby into the world Kindle Edition

Here are the links to my two parenting blogs I write:

• https://theparentingadventurestipsandtricks.wordpress.com 
• https://theparentingadventuresthebirthofmyson.wordpress.com

Many thanks for reading,


Carrie X

Writing a bullet journal to help balance my days

My Achievement Journal 

So if there was a pill that would help us with our confidence I bet we would take it in an instant. Life is full of ups and downs, and so our confidence can be destroyed quite easily.

Sometimes it is taking the rough with the smooth, but if we see things not as a problem but as a challenge, we can often control how we feel and not allow it to get hold of our confidence and ruin it.

I am currently writing a bullet journal, writing down everything I do each day. I have called it my achievement journal, and as I look over it and go through each day it is helping me to gain some perspective and see that I can accomplish daily goals by not multitasking but concentrating on one thing at a time and to see if I am doing to much on some days.

It has also made me see what I am not giving myself time for, like more rest time, so this weekend I have still written a list of things I would like to do, but shortened it down, and have included some quality TV time. Scheduling downtime is just a important as getting everyday chores done, because like today I do feel somewhat burnt out.

As I see it now, it is not about how many things you can do in one go but balancing time to do different things, like catch up on youtube, listen to an audiobook, fit in some exercise and watching TV. 

Life isn't about racing through each day but doing what you can to help you have a better structured life and doing the things you enjoy, aswell as things you gotta do. 

Many thanks for reading,


Carrie X

The Truth About Growing Up

When it comes to confidence the struggles with it can grow with you as you go from a child to an adult and new insecurities can surface, example celulite, having children and whether you will ever meet the man of your dreams. 

As a child I was instantly unsure about myself and took me a long time to find out who I really was, and discover what I was good at.

The truth about growing up is that when puberty hits and for me it was quite early on in my childhood that it all began, from the age of nine and upwards, hormones began to kick in, making me paranoid about having big boobs, still carrying puppy fat and being petite.

Being small has had it prejudices like people even when you become an adult treat you like a child, don't take you seriously and comment on your height.

Jokes about my size no longer bother me and I will often joke about it myself.
When growing up you do feel pressure from your peers and I felt for some time inadequate and different to other girls my age.

I was never one to have a lot of boyfriends, and didn't really date anyone until I reached my late teens and twenties.

Body confidence isn't something you instantly gain but can be a slow process and when you do find the thing that sparks energy and happiness about yourself can be hard to hold on to.

One thing that has helped me is helping those less fortunate, like when I met my pen friend Sammy who was in a wheelchair and how full of life she was, opened my eyes to the fact that I have nothing to complain about.

I can walk without needing support and I have all my limbs, can see and hear, so what do I have to moan about?

Also practicing gratitude and achieving things like the Great North Run, helped build my confidence to show what I really am capable of when I put my mind to it.

So if you feel low look around you and write down everything you are grateful for and this can have a real impact on how you feel about yourself.

Plus do something spontaneous that you have always wanted to do and take yourself out of normality as when we do the same thing all the time, this can lead us to having low self esteem, because we can get stuck in a rut.

Set yourself goals to helping you be more confidence in yourself, like giving yourself a makeover which with all the choices we have now is easy, especially as some of us are still in lockdown.

The one thing I have started to do as I was feeling unhappy with myself is started doing lots of walking again to hopefully lose some weight again, last week was a low week for me, but since beginning my fitness regime again, I am starting to feel a whole lot better with myself.

So take a long look at yourself, and realise that you are an incredible person and ignore those who think  you are not. 

Many thanks for reading,


Carrie X