"An unflattering photo of me was posted online and it sent me into a self-loathing spiral"

We all want to be viewed in the best light. Not only by others, but also by ourselves.

You’re getting this newsletter because you’re on Linkedin, and that probably means you want to grow your professional network, or attract new customers and generate more money.?

Bl**dy good on ya, I say. So many of us are afraid of putting ourselves out there, for fear of judgement. But here you are, doing the do.

So… what does it feel like - in terms of that image we’ve created of ourselves - the worst happens?

Say you’re at an event. You think you’ve dressed OK.?

(You spent about 30 minutes standing in your spanx, sweating, yelling ‘nothing here WORKS!’ but no one here at this very fancy event for very fancy people needs to know that.)?

You scrub up well and you’re enjoying yourself.?

The next day, some photos are posted online.?

You look at them… and your heart sinks.?

Is that really what I look like?

Look at my belly! Look at my wonky face! Why am I so sweaty? That dress looks bad on me.?

This happened to me the other day. Someone took a photo of me that I didn’t know was being taken and that I don’t feel I particularly look ‘my best’ in.?

Their intention is a question for another day.?

The question for today is - why did it make me feel so crappy??

And - does it make me a hypocrite when I’m out here desperately trying to help women feel more confident, but every now and again I have one of these awful bouts of I’m-not-good-enough-ness?

Having agonised over this for a while (are you even a millennial if you don’t #selfreflect),? decided very defiantly that the answer is NO.?

That photo, for a bit, made me want to retreat under the duvet, call time on my business, cancel my social media and never be seen in public again.?

BUT WHO IS THAT HELPING?!?

This experience happened so that I could share it. To serve as a reminder of why I set up my business and did all my coaching qualifications and wanted to help other women (and myself in the process).

Despite a couple of people recently telling me that they think me sharing all this stuff is ‘bad for [your]? business’ because ‘you’re supposed to show people you have something they want’ - in my line of work, I think honesty is the most important policy.?

And who says honesty isn’t the very thing they want? Who says they’re aren’t sick of the way social media and #livingmybestlife makes them feel?

And in my experience, women don’t really want to work with someone who’s pretending to have their sh*t together all the time. They don’t want to work with someone who looks so perfect that the thought of getting undressed in front of them is sickening.?

They don’t want to work with someone who feels judgemental, or like they don’t really understand what you mean when you say you feel overwhelmed/not good enough/like you’re constantly trying to lose the same 5lbs over and over again in the endless quest for happiness.?

So YES. Someone took a photo of me and for a bit it made me feel cr*p.?

YES. Sometimes my husband tells me I look nice and I do the ‘what-are-you-talking-about-i’m-a-troll’ routine.

YES… Sometimes, I don’t get all dressed up with nowhere to go. Sometimes I stay in my comfies. Sometimes I get super paranoid about my nose and worry that when people meet me in real life they’ll think I’m a catfish.

Does this make me a hypocrite?... Maybe -? if I wasn’t telling you about it.?

What it makes me is a woman, living in a world that constantly tells her she isn’t good enough, coaching herself every day on the journey to self-acceptance and wanting to help others do the same.?

We don’t always learn from those who are SO far down the road they’re unrelatable to us.?

We learn from the people who are just one or two steps ahead, who’ve been where we are and actually get it.?

I know there are lots of events coming up this summer, and having had a few clients recently say ‘I hate the thought of photos being taken of me’ - I thought it might be helpful to give you a few reminders:

• The people who love you, love you at 360-degrees. They see all of you and they’re here and they want more?
• It’s just a photo. It’s a 2D snap of one tiny second in your 3D big, beautiful life. It doesn’t deserve the weight you’re placing on it.
• The reason experiences like this feel so humbling is because you’re comparing yourself to an image you’ve cultivated in your head. And inside that same head are all your memories, experiences, self-limiting beliefs. You will never see yourself the way everyone sees you (fyi, we think you’re amazing), when you’re carrying around a huge sack of mental cr@p.
• Even Beyonce has photos she thinks are bad (Bey, if you’re reading this, as above what you talking about, girl?!). When she did the Superbowl performance, she had her branding team send emails to the press demanding they stop publishing non-approved images.
• The reason you get that sinking feeling when you see an *unflattering* photo ISN’T YOU. It’s all this sh*t society made you think about yourself. Just IMAGINE for a second how good you’d feel if social media/marketing that preys on women’s vulnerabilities/camera phones didn’t exist.?
• If you see photos of a friend, how does it make you feel? Do you start telling her, ‘omg you look like absolute garbage, have you put on weight?? You’ve really let yourself go’??? NO, you don’t. And if you do, you’re an awful friend. You NEVER talk to your friends the way you’re talking to yourself.?
• You see the photo, and you feel bad… and then you feel even worse because you have so much guilt attached to feeling bad about it. You should #loveyourself, right?! Once you learn that every feeling is a chance to explore yourself, you’ll start to feel more free. There is no need to feel guilty - but there is a need (if you want to grow from this experience) - to dig deeper into why you hate the photo so much.?As uncomfortable as it might be - find a quiet spot, light a candle, take some deep breaths and start journaling. Let is allllll flow out. No judgement. No holding back. If you release enough of it, you’ll get to the crux of what it is that makes you feel this way (spoiler alert: it’s never actually about your appearance, it’s about having taken hold of this idea that you aren’t good enough, which was never your idea in the first place).