Key Takeaways
There is no need for extra time for confidence! Small quick things like mental resets or having a mindful morning determine themselves well in a busy schedule.
It’s all about function, not looks. The body is incredibly confident when you learn to appreciate what it does for you and not only for how it looks.
Fitting and comfortable clothing is more important than fashions. Confidence is more of a day to day thing that comfort and fit have in regard to following fashion trends.
The motion should seem good and not cause pain. When you select activities you enjoy over things you must do to work out, you will be improving your relationship with your body.
It’s important to block it off in your mind. For the long-term, setting limits when it comes to what you hear and read about your looks will protect your confidence.
Intro
I know what it feels like to not have enough time to think about how you feel in your skin when you are required to work, have a family, and have a mile-long to-do list for every single day. Throughout my experience, I’ve discovered some cool small but practical ways to gain body confidence even on the busiest of days; I’d like to tell you what has worked for me—and many women I’ve spoken with.
Why Body Confidence Feels So Hard When Life Is Busy
In the hustle and bustle of life, work commitments and family obligations can often push self-image issues to the back burner. I’m not really taking note of myself at all, just soldiering on until the end of the day, when I’m stretched thin. All that activity robs us of time and our sensations in the body.
There’s also the comparison trap. When we do something while multi-tasking on social media, right before sleep or at lunch time when we don’t have much time to spare it creates a scenario where we are exposed to images that have been specifically created to make us feel bad about ourselves. I have caught myself doing this many times more than I would like to admit, comparing myself when I am tired and real life, to someone’s highlight reel life. It’s a comparison that isn’t fair, but our brains don’t always recognize that fact at the time.
Shifting the Way You Think About Your Body
First, I believe it is important for us to discuss mindset before we get down and dirty with any of the habits, as the tips on this list will only work if you’re changing mentally at the same time. Body confidence is not about liking everything about how you look at all the time. I have always thought more in terms of respect and appreciative than admiration constantly.
I have begun to notice my body and not just how it looks. My legs walk me through full days, my arms are used to embrace my children, carry my shopping and load my grocery bags, my hands type, cook and create. Taking myself away from appearance and toward a measure of function and capability, the pressure that accompanies some overly eccentric “standard” of the appearance is naturally a bit relaxed.
Quick Confidence-Building Habits for Busy Mornings
Mornings are frequently the busiest time of the day, but are also incredibly important in terms of setting the tone for the rest of the day. I’ve added some small erradic habits to my a.m. that add little time but an aura of increased self-esteem.
One of the things I have seen that will make the difference in my life is selecting my clothes at night that make me feel good, not rushing one morning. I move differently in the day if I feel put together, even if I’m wearing a simple outfit. I also began to stand a little straighter and lift my shoulders back before I left the home; little things that meant that my mind was in a better attitude too.
Another significant change is not using the scale. I remember I used to walk on it to my morning service and if I got an unfavorable number, I was in a foul mood before breakfast! The mornings were then lighter, both figuratively and literally, in terms of mental energy I would allocate to worrying about my body before 8 a.m. in the morning.
Fast Morning Confidence Rituals
On my busiest days, here is a list of some aspects I seek to work into my morning routine:
Tell yourself one positive thing in the mirror. It may not be visual – it might be “I was good at that yesterday” or “I am doing the best I can.”
Wear appropriately and wear comfortably. Clothes that don’t fit properly can be eroding that confidence for a whole day without anyone ever noticing.
Stretch for 2 minutes. When you wake up you are more awake in this body; you feel more connected in this body.
Don’t log on to social media right away. Try to allow yourself a minimum of 15 minutes before looking at an app that compares.
Instead of a goal that has to do with your body, set an intention. However, something such as “I want to feel calm today” gets away from that “appearance” pressure.
They are tiny rituals that add up to less than 10 minutes total, but have helped me significantly improve my day to day functioning.
Dressing for Confidence Without Extra Time or Money
When I first heard the term “confident,” I thought that meant I would have to go on a shopping trip that took up way too much time and that it would be clothes that would be out of my budget. I learned that with time, fashion and the price tag is not the only thing to which confidence through clothing pertains, it is fitting and comfortable.
A few key pieces designed and relatively inexpensive — such as a few basics — was more important than more clothing. Any blazer that doesn’t truly fit my shoulder or pants hemmed to my right measurement makes it really feel and seem a bit extra thrown-together. I don’t do it too much maybe once or twice each year, but it pays off for months.
I began experimenting with the tactile properties of fabrics throughout the day, instead. When clothes are itchy or too tight, it just reminds me of being uncomfortable, and that adds up to self-confidence, at least unconsciously. I adopted a change in my nooks today and started wearing tunic breathable and comfortable pieces for my basic outfits, and it made a huge difference with my backdrop noise.
Colour has been a factor as well. I made the observation that when I dress myself in colours that I like, as opposed to just “safe” neutrals, I get a little bump just by virtue of looking at myself. It’s an insignificant focus point but little positive reinforcement takes its toll on the busier of weeks.
Making Time for Movement Without a Big Time Commitment
Often, exercise is thought as a way of changing the body, but focusing on how we feel in our bodies while we’re exercising made for a complete paradigm shift for me. Frankly speaking, being a busy lady, I don’t have hours to spend at the gym.
So, I began to split it up into mini sessions all day long, since I never found the one hour of perfect time to really work out. “I crave an hour to burn off extra calories, but that’s not in the cards; a 10-minute walk after lunch, a few minutes of stretching while dinner is cooking or doing a quick set of bodyweight exercises at my desk during a work break really counts.”
The real difference, however, was selecting a movement that I like vs what are “the rules” of what I thought I should or shouldn’t do. Running is something I dislike doing, and yet I didn’t push myself on it. I enjoy moving while I’m cooked and cooking while I’m moved around in a way – dancing around my kitchen or a quick yoga flow is much more sustainable, and I really don’t dread it anymore. Movement becomes punishment, when movement becomes punishment, he/she has negative body feelings. When it’s done to feel better about oneself, it is confidence-boosting.
I also no longer log every workout like a nutcase. Watching the number of calories burned or steps taken constantly became more stress inducing than stress reducing. Now I exercise because it feels good and that has turned exercise from something I feel bad about into something I feel good about.
Reframing Self-Talk During a Hectic Day
More than anything else outside of me affects my confidence, it’s the way I’m speaking to myself throughout the day when I am busy. With so many things going on in our lives, we rarely take time to consider how we talk to ourselves, and often negative self-talk is taking place without us realizing it.
I began to notice that irritating voice in my head while it was happening, such as “I look exhausted” or “these pants don’t fit right today” and recounted them to myself and re-channeled them. Rather than ‘I look exhausted’, say ‘I’ve been busy throughout the week and my body is showing it. It’s not about playing things up – it’s about using the right words that are honest, but not unnecessarily hurtful.
The days are busy and also have those moments—moments when we imagine we have to compare ourselves with someone else—mom moments when we try to compare ourselves with another mom who is effortlessly put-together, or another mom who is rested at school pickup. I’ve learned how to be aware of those comparison thoughts without ruminating on them. Taking note of “there’s that comparison thought again” and kind-of ‘observing’ versus reacting to it, has helped decrease the impact of those moments having on my mood.
Quick Mental Resets for Confidence Throughout the Day
These are my go-to excuses to throw negative self-talk the hard way on the next hectic day:
When you catch yourself having a “down” thought about how you look, STOP and breathe 3 times deeply.
Rather than criticise, make a neutral observation, such as saying that you are tired, not how you look while you’re tired.
Remember a compliment you have been given in the last few weeks and take it.
Redirect the self-worth toward achievement with a task-based win that could be completing a project or doing something difficult in a pleasing manner.
Send a supportive friend a short and sincere message, sometimes its better to say it out loud to someone else to reduce its impact.
These resets can even be performed in less than one minute per reset – making them very realistic in practice, particularly during the most busy parts of a day.
Setting Boundaries Around Appearance-Based Comments
A thing that I still took me longer to do is to know how to deal with other folks reactions to my body, whether or not well-intended or not, whether from family or work. The terms ‘putting on weight’ or ‘losing weight’ or ‘how do you look’ can be depleters of confidence without us realising, even if intended as a compliment.
I began responding to these conversations when they arose in a way that would hopefully redirect them. One has learned how to respond to a comment focusing upon weight or size in response or “I’d rather change the subject,” or with a simple comment, “I’d rather talk about something else. This took a practice, but, it has helped a lot to protect my mental space.
I also have been more mindful about what content I follow; I’ve unfollowed certain accounts that repeatedly make me feel bad about myself despite not being an abusive or outright negative account. Making efforts to curate my online personal space have been the one thing that has had the most impact on my self-assurance in my daily life.
Prioritizing Rest as a Confidence Booster
There’s a correlation between sleep and confidence that I didn’t appreciate at first. I know that if I’m working on too little sleep, my inner voice starts screaming at me and I am much more likely to obsess on things related to appearances. How well I rest, matter shows up in my confidence in ways that I did not expect!
I began to guard a fixed sleep time schedule, even if it meant leaving some things undone until the following day. Understanding the hard reality that I can better deal with stress, self-image and the daily grind of life when I’m not exhausted helped me to rationalize this refocusing of my priorities even when it meant that I genuinely had a busy period of life.
Rest breaks are important, too, during the day. My mind is allowed to reset after just 5 minutes of quiet, away from any screens, before I dive back in to the next thing I have to do! These micro-breaks are not only “physical breaks” but they are ways that allow me to pause and check in with myself instead of going on autopilot all day long.
Building Confidence Through Small Wins, Not Big Overhauls
I used to believe that you needed to undergo some pretty massive change, a radical lifestyle makeover, weight loss or your entire wardrobe to get body confidence. The reverse of that worked: small victories—little bits of small success that kind of compounded on a different but growing relationship with myself over the years.
It was an outlet to celebrate small moments, wearing an outfit I felt good in, finishing a workout despite being unmotivated, or just getting through a stressful day without self beating up, with no additional time committed and no extra effort, just positive reinforcement of patterns. While small gains on a day-to-day basis, these victories help create a significant and positive shift in attitude with weeks and months.
Summary
You don’t have to fit body confidence into your world with a lot of free time or a radical lifestyle change for Mum’s like you with a million different things going on, that would be difficult!
This has boiled down to the little, incremental and realistic changes: kindnesser with myself, clothes that actually fit, moving that isn’t crippling, and boundaries around what I say and what I post that erode my confidence.
All of these things did not occur suddenly and overnight and sometimes I still get days where I fall into old insecurities.
