How does having a better body image affect confidence and vice versa

In the previous blogs, we talked about the importance of confidence ] and important tips to improve it. Now, we want to find out the relationship between confidence and body image, which is one of the most important factors affecting our everyday lives. 

Body image

One of the main reasons for the importance of body image is its influence on thoughts, emotions, and confidence (which then affects), and one’s ability to accomplish goals and socialize.

• Why is it important?

Body image is one’s perception of their physical self which would then form positive or negative thoughts and feelings depending on the ranging experiences one can have. Since feelings and experiences are not always positive or negative, body image ranges between positive and negative. 

Several factors including but not limited to social norms, advertising, social media, friends, family, and culture influence your body image. Society portrays a “flawless” body image to convince people that they have to live by society's standards to be “perfect”. With that being said, your thoughts, beliefs, and values directly affect your body image. 

• Negative effects

Body image has a huge impact on our behaviour, mental and physical health, social interaction, and how we treat ourselves (Carcieri, 2015). The pressure to have the “ideal” and “perfect” body motivates people to risk the development of serious illnesses. Eating disorders are one of the first mental illnesses developed which could lead to other mental and physical health problems. Restricting yourself from eating keeps the brain from receiving as many nutrients as it needs to function properly. On the other hand, binge eating has the same effect on the body as chronic stress (we will talk more about it in blog 7) and therefore, it causes depression, ADHD, heart problems, respiratory failure, etc.

Even cartoons promote a negative body image! Sadly, we live in a world where cartoons present beauty standards and unrealistic body images, making kids struggle with body image! A study conducted by the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years (PACEY) from childcare professionals shows that children begin facing body confidence issues when they are only three years old!

• Healthy body image

You know you have a healthy body image when you are able to completely accept your imperfections and not try to change anything in your body to look similar to “the perfect” bodies that society portrays. Having a healthy body image allows you to identify unrealistic standards of attractiveness in society. Moreover, it would decrease the possibility of making comparisons with the “flawless” or “ideal” body. 

Ultimately, as mentioned in How to be more confident? having a healthy body image is one of the contributing factors affecting the confidence level. With a positive body image, individuals would be aware that everyone has unique characteristics and everyone would love themselves and be grateful for everything their body does for them. So, they would focus on more valuable things which could guarantee success such as their physical abilities, strengths, and mental health. 

Confidence

Feeling good about your strengths and abilities gives you the motivation to achieve goals and improve other skills like self-esteem and self-worth by which you would be capable to love yourself despite your weaknesses and eventually develop a healthy body image. So far, we have realized the importance of confidence and its effects on goal accomplishment, stress, and fears. We also went through the most important factors which help boost confidence. Achieving more and bigger goals makes us feel more positive about our strengths and abilities and so it boosts self-esteem and self-worth. 

Related: How to be more confident?, BTS values resilience and confidence, what they are, why they’re important?

• Self-esteem

Having the ability to have faith in your strengths or believe that you are capable of doing different things would improve your self-esteem as you would think more positively of yourself. Self-esteem has a huge impact on your behaviour, thoughts, and feelings; therefore, if improved, you would be more likely to take smart risks, face your fears, and most importantly, accept your mistakes and flaws. 

The world would be super boring and tedious if everyone was perfect because then there wouldn’t be any challenges in life. It would be like we are living the same day every day, not to mention, everyone would behave the same way. So, we should really value imperfections as they make us unique! I think the best way we could view our “flaws” is to consider them an opportunity to be a better person. 

Believing that everyone is perfect in their own way and normalizing imperfections would reduce self-criticism since people wouldn’t blame themselves for their wrong actions or “imperfect” body. Instead, they would see it as a chance to improve their actions and achieve a healthy body image.

• Self-worth

A super important thing that we should all know is that no one is “flawless”, there is no “perfect” body, and society only uses this word purposely to reduce confidence and self-esteem in people! Once you believe that you are not capable of having the ideal body (which is unrealistic, you start looking for validation or basically anything that causes you to doubt your abilities). 

Now, what is self-worth? It is defined as “the sense of one’s own value or worth”. So, knowing that you are way too valuable and worthy to not be judged for your physical appearances, motivates you to develop a positive body image. According to Covington & Berry (1976), self-worth theory states that finding self-acceptance is the most important thing to do and is done by accomplishing goals in life. Not to mention, having high self-worth and being confident could result in the development of self-acceptance, which allows individuals to build a better and healthier body image.

Conclusion

Hey, now you know confidence and body image are directly related and developing a healthy body image or boosting confidence could improve skills like self-esteem, self-worth, and sociability! Stick around to learn more about the effects of confidence on stress levels, self-esteem, physical literacy, and wrestling.