![Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time: Part 2 [The Mini-Series] (Outweigh) - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/iCJSuq9r)
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change. I'm learning to love who I am. A gat I'm strong, I feel free, I know every part of me it is beautiful and then will always out way if you feel it with your hands and there She'll some love to the boy.
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Happy Saturday, Outweigh. I'm Amy Brown and I'm Leanne Ellington and we are here with part two of a mini series that we're doing called two Things Can Be True at the Same Time. Last week we talked about how you can be pro body image and still have health goals that you want to reach. And this week we're talking about how you can be on the journey to self love and self worth and I'll care about what
you look like. Yeah, And when it comes to self love and self worth, Leanne is an expert self image scientist.
Is what you call yourself.
I'm on the journey as well, and I am obsessively studying it, researching it, teaching it, living it.
So how can these two things be true at the same time?
Yeah?
And it does kind of go hand in hand with what we talked about last week. You know, where we think like, oh, if I'm on this healthy healing journey, I can't also have these health goals. Well, it's like you can also be on this healthy healing journey of your heart and your self image. And when I talk about self image, what I really mean is what are you saying to yourself and about yourself? How are you seeing yourself? How are you perceiving yourself? What are the
goggles that you're seeing yourself through. I'll always be on that journey the rest of my life, right because we're meaning making machines, We're constantly seeing ourselves through through different lenses, and even as we up level and overcome different circumstances, we're taking on new roles and new beliefs come up in new doubts. So it's something that I I don't
ever want to not be on. But it also I think especially in the world of where women specifically are talking about healing their relationship with food, healing their relationship with their body and the body image stuff that comes alongside that. Again, talking about overcoming extremism, there's a lot of hate, so to speak, on caring what you look like. And so if we got geeky for just a second and we talk to our logic and reason side before
we get into the heart side of it. Right on a logic and reason side, there is a very specific part of your brain called the acc the antior singular cortex.
I talk about it all the time. It's called the social brain.
It's the part of our brain that absolutely cares what other people think about us. It's bigger in females than it is in males, and so we have an entire part of our brain that cares what people think about us, whether we're accepted, whether we're connected, whether we're cared for.
Do they like me? Are they judging me? Is she looking at what I'm wearing? Do I have a wedgie? Whatever? It is, right, So we're wired to care.
But as women, it's human of us to want to feel beautiful and pretty and attractive and all of those things.
And we don't have to apologize it now.
But there's a dark side of it too, which I personally experienced was that when that's all you are weighing and measuring your self worth and your self esteem by, that's when it can become a very dark, dark place and a rabbit hole of emptiness to be honest. Right, So there's those distinctions. So first and foremost, giving yourself permission to care what you look like and care about your appearance and take pride in your appearance. Right, There's so many women I talk to you, They're like, oh,
I love fashion. I love showing my personality and fashion. And I know women that are like, I love doing makeup. It's my thing. I love watching YouTube videos and it just like it's a creative outlet. And some of them are like, love doing my hair, but oh, that's so superficial. I'm like, no, it's not superficial. It's something that you love. It's something that you enjoy, it's something that you appreciate. It's something that you take passion in and take pride in,
like live it up, you know. And because that's why we're working together, let's also make sure that that's not the only that's encompassing your value of how you're weighing yourself. Right, So those distinctions, So, first and foremost, you have permission to care what you look like, but also just reinforcing you have an entire part of your brain that actually does care what you look like, how you're perceived, all of that, So again, finding that line between caring but
also not letting it completely take over your life. And one of the things I talk about, and then I'll flip it over back to you, is this idea of self endorsement. Because we are wired to care what other people think about us, right, it's impossible not to, especially the female brain. But what if you care just a little bit more about what you think and what you say and you feel about yourself more than what other people think and say and feel about you, and you're
building that endorsement and self image within yourself. And then again, obviously it's not just tied up in how you look, but it doesn't have to completely take away the fact that you're human.
And chances are, if you're listening to this.
You're a woman and you are going to care and you're allowed to and there's nothing superficial, there's nothing catty, there's nothing petty about it, and allowing it to be coexisting while you're on that journey of love and worthiness and receiving all of the beauty of who you are inside as well.
What's happening with certain people that are vocal about how I don't care what anybody else thinks.
It's a lie they're probably telling themselves, because we do care some people. It's a coping mechanism, it's a defense mechanism, it's a front. But giving them love and compassion because it might just seem like it's easier to say that.
I mean, we all walk around with stories. I have them. I have my own stories, myself them. You know, we all have them.
We're all storytellers, we're all mena makers. So when people say I don't care what other people think, oftentimes, and again this is all anecdotal, I don't have, you know, evidence on this, there's no there's no study on this. But oftentimes I have found they actually care more, and that is some sort of coping mechanism, a shell affront.
I've even found that at times I tried to say that out loud or to myself, and I know that it's not true. Yeah, but I've owned it before too, and I know that I hear others. So I thought I would ask that question because I feel like there's some people that are like, well, wait, I really don't care what other people think.
But the flip side of that, is in like turning it into a self endorsement kind of way of thinking. Like so, for example, I'm very dorky. I mean, you know me, I'm dorky. I say dorky things. But like part of that I used to apologize for that. I was like, ooh, like are people gonna think I'm a dark And now I'm just like, I own my dorkiness.
So you can't hurt me when I'm saying when I already accept me, right, So if there's something that you don't accept about about me, but I accept me for it, it's not gonna hurt me.
It's not going to penetrate my bubble.
So on the flip side of that, it's like, wherever we say we don't care, it's like, what if you It's not that you don't care, but what if you start caring about what you say and how you feel and believing in yourself in those areas.
So it's not that you.
Won't care, but it just won't harm you, hurt you, you know, penetrate your bubble of self love.
It's more of that saying of you know, your opinion of me is none of my business exactly, So I do care, But at the same time, I have to know, like it's none of my business and I'm not going to let this affect me.
And if it does affect me, well that's on me. Absolutely.
Yeah.
It is our responsibility on how we react to things. And I think two things being true at the same time. You know, you mentioned some people it might be makeup or they're really into face stuff and facials and whatever they want to get done there or clothing and that makes them feel really good. That might not be true for you, but for them, they don't have to apologize for it because that's what's making them happy. Like that is something that they can own and they don't care
if you're not into fashion. That's something where That's where I was going with it, like two things can be true. They cannot care, They cannot care what other people think about that totally. Our brain, in turn, still cares what people think.
Such a good point.
Yeah, I can get a little confusing a little, but I was thinking specifically of this person I follow on Instagram. Her name is Gail and her handle is at Gail's Style, and she lives in New York and I love her style. I wish I could just have everything that she has and a story that I've often.
Told myself is, oh, I can't get dressed.
I'm trying to start speaking differently to myself when I'm waking up in the morning, getting ready and getting ready for work, of I go to my closet and I pick out outfits with these because I don't want to stress myself out. The more I say, oh, dress, I can't put outfits together, the more I'm gonna not be
able to put outfits together. But she first got into fashion because in junior high or high school, she was not treated very well by some of her peers, and that was a way that she would show up to school feeling confident. She loved fashion, and she would go home and put together these awesome outfits and that's how
she would show to school. And then people started being like, Oh, I love how you put that together, or that looks so good, and that was her way of blocking what others were saying and stepping into who she wanted to be. And now she's fifty years old and has a career styling people and going into their closets and helping them feel their most confident. And she truly believes because this
is what she's into. Maybe not everybody else is, but she gets dressed every single day and for nobody else but herself because that's what she trained herself to do when she was younger. And she has her hair done every single day. And some people would be like, ugh, that seems exhausting, but for her, that's what works.
Totally.
I don't know her personally, but I feel like I know a lot of what she shared enough online to say that her self worth isn't attached to any of that, but that is something that she cares about, yeah, unapologetically, unapologetically, like she puts it out there on front street to where I could see other people might be like, oh my gosh, this woman's but no, we don't even need
to judge what's your thing for you? And then maybe if you are judging that, it's a way to look inward and be like, oh, what am I not giving myself that I care about?
What am I denying totally?
Because there's probably something, if I'm being honest, that I care about and I would like to work on while still caring about my self love and self worth and not attaching my self worth to my appearance.
Totally and just to give an example, like a completely opposite example of that.
So fifteen years ago.
I had one hundred extra pounds on me, and I was wearing men's jeans and frumpy, you know, big things to cover up my body. I couldn't walk into stores. They didn't have plus size like they do now. Like there wasn't very fashion forward, you know, plus size clothes back then.
And I lost like my.
Femininity in a way, Like I did my hair and my makeup and all that, but like I kind of felt more masculine in a way. It sounds kind of weird to say that, but I lost that like feminine essence of who I am because I was so covered up and like hidden in my body and disconnected from my body. So one of the experiments that I went on, and I remember this was I went to the Mac counter and I was like, I've never worn lipstick. Can
you help me find a shade to wear lipstick? And I literally went on what I called a beauty experiment where I was playing around with fashion and I was trying to find my inner beauty because I either never had it or lost it somewhere along the lines because I was so dissociated with my body. But can you
imagine if I was apologetic about finding my beauty. I looked at it as something that I really wanted to seek out and actually create within me, and it caused a little bit of like a creative outflow in me.
So there's sides of it too.
That maybe we want it, but also maybe we lost it along the way because we got lost in our own journey, right, And these are the things if we're apologizing for carrying what we look like, we're missing out
on the next level of transformation. But again the distinction, we don't want to hide in that and let it encompass all of our self worth, but like, give yourself permission to take pride in feeling that inner beauty, but also so the outer beauty that matches it, and it reflects who you're being on the inside.
Yeah, And then it makes me think of that curiosity versus judgment, which is where I think my brain was trying to take me with the Gale thing. As some people might look at how she's choosing to show up and be like, oh, I can't believe she puts so much emphasis.
On that stuff.
But if you're doing that, then I would get curious about hmm, is it because you would like to show up in that way and to your point of now things being more available in different sizes, which is amazing, amazing. It's so great that even Gale encourages that of like, Okay, go into your closet and I want you to start
collecting pieces that what do you put on? It makes you, It makes you come alive, It makes you feel your best, not what size it is, yes, but meet yourself exactly where you are right now, your body, where you are right now, with you. You found yourself resorting to you know, t shirts and jeans, when if you had had the option, you could have and found stuff that really made you feel who you felt like on the inside and wanted to be and you deserve to be and you are.
You needed accessibility to the items. But now they're out there. So don't let that you wish it was a certain number or you want to look a certain way. No, just start stepping into that. If you would like to start showing up in a different way, buy some of those clothes that are that size.
Don't wait until you lose weight.
Or don't even put your the pressure on yourself to lose weight, because that's not what it's about. You can still care about your appearance wherever you are without waiting for the weight to make it happen. Waiting for the weight right, because the truth is, you may not even need to. I think sometimes society may be telling.
You you need to lose weight, but just start living now. Start living now.
Yes, so two things can be true at the same time, and this one in particular is to not have your self worth tied to your parents, but still care.
About your parents.
If you want to amen, you have full permission, Full permission land.
Where can people find.
You if you want to hear more about this conversation the self image of the body image rewiring or brain stresslessseeding dot com.
It's all there and I am at Radio Amy on Instagram. We'll see y'all next Saturday for part three of this series.
Bye bye,