10 Tips for Making Peace with Your Body

Two percent. That’s how many women chose the word “beautiful” to describe themselves in a recent worldwide study led by researchers from Harvard University and the London School of Economics. It’s a disturbingly low number, and clearly more than two percent of the women on this planet are beautiful, we just need to retrain ourselves to see it—and believe it.

Here are 10 tips to making peace with your body:

1. Make a list of “nots” you’ve encountered in your life, i.e. not thin enough, not enough like what you see in the media, not pretty enough. Realize how many there are. Realize that it’s a list of demands from other people and institutions, and that you don’t have to meet any requirements other than those you place on yourself.

2. Understand that internal voices come from external forces like culture, religion, and family. If you find yourself criticizing with thoughts like “I’m all wrong and bad,” try to remind yourself that those thoughts were most likely put in your head from outside sources.

3. Forget about diets and obsessing over what you eat and pay more attention to what you think: “If you pay more attention to what comes out of your mouth,” reasons Philips, “You could pay a lot more attention to what goes into your mouth because you’d be living with a higher level of consciousness.”

4. Engage yourself in exercise specifically designed to help you appreciate your different body parts. Commit to a month of participation in a movement dance class or swimming to connect with the power of your legs or take a massage class to learn about the healing energy of your hands. It will refamiliarize you with your divine physical qualities.

5. If you find yourself being critical of your body, ask yourself “what do I gain from being preoccupied and dissatisfied with my ‘flaws?’” The answer is most likely not a whole lot, so move past them.

6. Remind yourself that you deserve to do things like swimming or sunbathing regardless of the shape of your body.

7. Actively strive to be good to your body through moderate exercise and pampering. Nobody enjoys grueling physical workouts endured simply to burn calories.

8. Find conversation topics to discuss with friends that don’t have to do with dieting, weight- loss, feeling bloated, or time logged at the gym.

9. Think of yourself in a global context. It’s easier to become dissatisfied when focusing on images or ideas that are specific to say, Hollywood movies, or high fashion magazines.

10. And remember these images represent just a tiny fraction of the possibilities for beauty and success. Compliment yourself every time you criticize yourself.