“You have to get to a place where you love the way that you look deeply because this isn’t just impacting your own self-confidence, this is likely impacting your career. It’s likely impacting your relationships. It’s impacting every area of your life.”

If you’re like me, you’ve had negative thoughts about your body. It’s not like I WANT to have these thoughts. Logically, I KNOW my body is beautiful just the way it is and yet there are thoughts that pop up from time to time that frankly make me feel horrible about the way I look.

Today, I’m sharing all about my own personal growth journey around my own body insecurities, because recently I’ve had an incredibly transformative experience.

Through recent work with my embodiment coach, Kaycee Joy and my anti-racism coach Alyssa Hall, as well as some eye-opening experiences in my marriage on a recent family vacation, I FINALLY feel like I’ve gotten to a place where I am proud of my own body.

And I want you to get there too because the drama we create around our own bodies has got to stop. It’s taking up our brain space that I know we all agree could be used for much more effective things.

But between societal messaging and a woman’s innate desire to please others, drama around our bodies has become a serious problem. Not only do we turn on ourselves internally, we turn on others for having what we want.

And more likely than not, the women that have what you want also have their own body issues they’re dealing with.

Negative thoughts about our bodies don’t escape any of us. We are all in this together. Please don’t forget that.

So tune into the podcast today if you’re ready for deeply personal stories about the discoveries and work I’ve made on myself. There are simple mindset shifts that have completely changed my life, and I know they will change yours too. Trust me.

Listen to this powerful and personal episode at the top of this page.

POST EPISODE RESOURCES:

Full Transcript:

Episode 125: LOVE YOUR LOOKS

Body Insecurities | How to love your body just the way it is

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 125, Love Your Looks.

[music]

Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear- facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. jWe can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.

[music]

Hi there, Ms. Unstoppable. I am so excited for today’s episode and what I’m going to share with you. I want to jump right into it, but before I do, I want to give a shout out to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, especially if you listen on Apple Podcasts and if you don’t, you’re always welcome to go leave a review for the show on my Facebook page. You just go over to Facebook, search Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y, Preston. Over there, you’ll see my business page and you can leave a review for the show there. Just know when you leave a review for the show, then you can take a picture of it and submit it to a link that will be in the show notes, and when you do that, you get a free copy of my podcasts book. In this podcast book, my admin, Rachel, and I took all the first 100 episodes of the show and we created one-page summaries on each episode.

This book is truly a study guide for life. Anytime you’re going through something, a career change, or dealing with a certain feeling. We talk about so many different things in those first 100 episodes. You will be able to go flip to that page and get the quick and easy summary of step-by-step, what to do in order to allow yourself to thrive during that transition you’re making or whatever you’re feeling, et cetera, et cetera. Please go leave a review for the show. Take that picture. Go to the link and show notes, and I’ll just give it to you. Here now too, it’s lindsayepreston.com/100, and it’s just the numbers 100. Then you submit that picture and give us your email, and then Rachel will email that over to you. If you were a current client, you also get that book printed and shipped to you as well. Pretty cool stuff.

Today, we’re talking about loving your looks. I have a story for you as we get into this episode. This past year and 2021, I have been doing some very deep transformative work and coaching. I’m talking about me being the client. I’ve had two primary coaches. The first, I’ve talked about on the show often with Kaycee Joy, who considers herself an embodiment coach. Really getting people into their bodies. Kaycee’s been a client of mine. I saw how she was transformed in her life by doing that embodiment work, and I was like, “Kaycee, I want some of that in my life,” and she became more certified as a coach in that work. It’s been so eye-opening and transformative to really get into my body. I’ve done a ton of mindset work over the years and been in my head and granted I have been a dancer most of my life. You would think I would be in touch with my body, but it was just this new layer that I needed in order to really heal some things and move forward.

Kaycee said it best when I had a consult with her was Lindsay, “Your head is completely on board with the life that you want to have, but your body is holding you back.” Your body is still like, “Hey, we need some stuff to release here.” We’ve been doing that work, again, been so amazing and this whole new level for me and a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Also, I have had an anti-racism coach, Alyssa. Alyssa and I have been doing weekly one-on- one sessions as well. I haven’t talked as much about Alyssa. I haven’t brought her on the show yet because I feel like I’m just getting to a place now about six months into the coaching, where I’m just at a place where I can start to articulate the changes that have happened within me by doing that work.

It’s been so amazing to in essence what feels like shed all of these societal layers that many of us are exposed to and we don’t even question, and we don’t even realize we’re being shown those layers. While logically, I knew about the BS that society has put on us with thoughts about women, and about different cultures, and about our bodies and all that stuff, but doing the work with Alyssa, I’ve just dug deeper. I guess too, as I’ve been doing this embodiment work with Kaycee, is like I’ve been taking what I’ve always known logically with those societal messages and really processing it through my body and feeling through that. Again, it’s just been so transformative and I can’t wait to bring Alyssa on the show and to talk all the things that we have gone through the past few months as we’ve coached together because what she does is amazing work.

I really just want to articulate even more what that work has done for me. I say all of this because what’s happened in the past few weeks for me, has just been so transformative in regards to my body. You hear me use the word transformative a lot today because that’s just how I’m feeling. Just to give you a rundown of what’s been going on is I recently got back from a trip to Hawaii, and I went for two weeks. I’ve never taken a vacation that long before in my entire life. This was the first vacation in the seven years I’ve had my business, where I was able to fully disconnect because my admin Rachel, has been on my team now for over a year. We just celebrated her one-year anniversary in June.

I’ve trained Rachel all year long to be able to support me in a way where I don’t even need to be in my business. Now, granted, of course I have my one-on-one clients and my group clients, and Rachel can’t take over there, but what was cool is that I also have Kaycee in my business. Kaycee coaches my clients as well, especially my group clients. While I was gone, Kaycee coached my group clients. My one-on-one clients were a little bit in a pickle, but I really prepped them before I left. Otherwise, my business was running very smoothly without me.

During these two weeks in Hawaii, I really wanted it to be a time where I was stepping into a new version of me. Again, I’ve been doing this work with Alyssa and Kaycee over the year, and I was like, “Okay, I’m just at this point where it’s like I’m just on the edge of this transformation from doing this work. I really want to figure out what it is in Hawaii and really just integrate what that work has done for me, and really just shift in a way to fully embody this person that I feel like I’ve been becoming over the past few months.”

Hawaii had its ups and downs. I started the vacation feeling amazing. At the airport, the airport is typically not a fun and sexy place, but I was on a high. I was just like, “Oh my gosh, I’m leaving my business for two weeks. This is incredible.” Hawaii is a trip that I mostly paid for with my money from my business, which just feels so amazing too, because of, you’ve heard my coach journey. For a long-time my business was making money, but I wasn’t taking money out for myself. If you watch Shark Tank a lot too, you realize this is a pretty common thing of like, “Oh yes, we made 1.5 million,” and they’re like, “Well, what did you take home?” They’re like, “Oh, we took home 30K, or we took home nothing.”

I just didn’t pay myself for a while and I’m starting to pay myself now. It just felt incredible. Like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve done this. Look at what I’ve created. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long.” Whereas my husband, as we started the trip was in a headspace where he just was low energy. You could tell he was very stressed. Now, going on travel days, he tends to take the lead on things because he used to travel a lot for work, and so he’s just like a pro at everything. He leads us and I know there’s some stress with that. He doesn’t particularly like traveling in that way, flying and all that. I just felt a lot of disappointment that he wasn’t in the same headspace as I was. Because the kids and I were in that headspace, and it was just so magical and beautiful to be there with them.

I started to get really resentful toward him and mad toward him, that he wasn’t in that space. What happened then as I was starting to get patience like, “Okay, he’s going to flip. He’s going to shift. He’s going to make the adjustment to get in what we call a vacation Jason,” [laughs] because the same Jason, and he just can get so fun on vacations. He just wasn’t making it. Day after day went by and I started to get really frustrated and I started to get resentful and mad at him to a point where we got in an argument, and part of the argument was, “Well, the way that you treat me and the way that you make these little side remarks at me is not helpful.”

I just started to get to a place where I could see even more the depth of when I get in that critical headspace, how detrimental it is. Because I was also watching my brother and sister-in-law and their marriage, and she didn’t criticize him. He does some things that would probably bother me, he’s very forgetful and things of that sort. I would probably make little side remarks of like, “Hey, come on, let’s fix this, let’s make this better.” Instead, she just was like, “Oh, that’s just what he does.” Not in a way too, where it’s dismissive, I just can’t explain it another way, of being dismissive. Sometimes you’re like, “Oh my gosh, she’s doing way too much for him.” It was just in a way of unconditional love.

Until on this trip I saw my mother-in-law and my father-in-law and their relationship. I was seeing some comparison with my relationship of things that I don’t really like. I was just observing and I was taking things in. Again, as I was taking all of this in, I was like, “I just feel like I’m really ready to let go of being critical toward my husband.” I realized the core thought as I get critical is that I don’t trust that he’s going to, in essence, shift out of it or I don’t trust that he’s going to grow. If I continue to think that he’s not going to grow or shift or change, that’s what I’m going to keep manifesting. Because think about it, when you’re trying to grow and shift and change, and somebody is sitting there, showing you your crap over and over again and being critical about it, it makes it worse.

It’s not that, again, I’m being dismissive here with him or that I’m giving him a free pass because he knows where he needs to grow. He was very apparent with me, “Lindsay, I see now even more how I can be uptight. I see that I have this anxiety that I need to let go of.” He was making this shift and I was just making it worse. Anyways, I was starting to just really let go of what I consider the wall around me. I’m not letting him in.

A couple of days later, we had this opportunity, I just arranged it, where we were able to go to the hotel, him and I alone and be in our room, because, just to give you some logistics of the trip, my brother and sister-in-law live in Hawaii. My brother-in-law is in the military. They are stationed there for the next three years. I can’t even get all the terms right, but my mother-in-law and father-in-law were staying at their house, and me and my kids and my husband were staying at a hotel for most of the trip. We would sleep at the hotel and then we would go over to their house and hang out and go to the beach and do whatever we’re going to do for the day.

Anyways, there was a moment where my husband and I could go back to the hotel by ourselves during the day and shower and get ready and all the things. Some of you, this may be TMI. This episode is probably going to be a lot of TMI. Just prepare yourself, because I’m going to talk about body stuff, obviously, in that is sex and some other body stuff. Please, don’t listen to this episode around kids, and if you’re not into that, maybe turn this off. Anyways, I arranged for us to go back to the hotel, and part of that was like, “Great, we’re going to rest at the hotel, we’re going to have this time, we’re going to have this amazing sex.” Our hotel room looked right over the ocean and you could open the windows and you could just take in the fullness of the ocean. It’s just beautiful.

We go back to the hotel and I shower and then I’m laying on the bed and I’m wearing this sun dress. Then he goes and showers and then he comes out and he’s like, “All right, let’s go,” meaning to go back to his brother’s house. I was like, “What the hell?” Granted, I was not very forward about, “Yes, we’re going to go back to the room, we’re going to do this.” I didn’t include him on my plan, but I just assumed just like, “We have time together in the middle of the day with no kids in this beautiful room. Why would you not think, ‘Hey, let me go have sex with my wife,’?”

In Hawaii at the time, too, they still have a lot of mask mandate. He puts on his mask and he’s like, “Let’s go.” There was still a part of me that was like, “Okay, maybe I’ll just stand up and I’ll go give him this amazing kiss and it will make him realize, “Hey, Lindsay really wants me to be with her right now,” but he put on his mask so damn fast. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Because a couple of days prior, I had really decided I wasn’t going to get mad anymore and I wasn’t going to get frustrated, what happened next, and I talk about this often on this show and with my clients all the time, the core of anger is sadness. Any time that you’re mad about anything or frustrated or pissed or whatever you want to call it, it’s really that you just need to get to sadness.

Finally, I allowed myself to feel very sad. I walked out of the hotel room and we pushed the elevator button because we were on the 30th floor. Again, such a beautiful room. I turned to him and I said, “You just had an opportunity to have sex with me and you didn’t take it,” and he is like, “Oh, my gosh, babe, I didn’t even think about it.” Granted, I could have easily shifted that conversation to where we get back in the room and I got what I wanted, but instead I just felt so deeply sad at that moment. From that sadness, I just started to bring forth all of these thoughts about the way that I look that I felt had gone away for a long time.

I thought those things were healed, I thought those things are out of me, but instead, it was just all the things that have been going on in my unconscious came to the conscious mind. “Lindsay, you’re disgusting. He doesn’t want to have sex with you because of this, this, this.” I just got really curious. I was like, “Woah, okay, here’s what’s going on in my mind.” I was still feeling through that I had felt deeply rejected by my husband and I had felt the feeling of, “Wow, this is where our marriage is at right now. We’re at a place where we have the opportunity to have sex in this amazing room and we don’t. What is that?”

I just allowed myself for a few days to just feel deeply sad about where my marriage was at. Granted, you could be like, “Lindsay, it’s just one thing. It didn’t go your way, you didn’t have sex. What’s the big deal?” This is where my marriage has been at for a couple of years of just like, “Go, go, go, grow, grow, grow, kids, kids, kids,” especially this past year with Corona, it’s been a lot. I just really sat there, I was like, “Wow, this is where we’re at. We’re just in a space where we’re not prioritizing each other as much as I want to. We’re just not in a headspace of thinking about each other sexually that often, we’re in a space of everybody and everything else comes before us. It’s just grow, grow, grow, more, more, more, in essence too, money, money, money,” because we just had all these money goals of coming together as a couple and we had some debt to clear up.

Then I was like, “Okay, now I’ve got to hit these savings goals,” and we’ve recently hit a really big savings goal. Even just hitting that really big goal, I was excited and he was flat- lined. He was just like, “Oh, yes, no big deal.” Again, I felt that deep sadness of, “What the hell, why are we doing all of this if you’re not even freaking excited about it?” I started to realize, “Okay, this money stuff is like deep shit for him. He’s got more work to do here and I’m not playing into his money scarcity issues anymore because I thought by us hitting this milestone, he would be happier and he’s just not.” He keeps telling me, “Well, we haven’t technically hit it yet.” I’m like, “Dude, we’ve hit the fucking milestone,” whatever. Anyways, I’m feeling these feelings, as I’m feeling this sadness, I’m listening to the thoughts in my head of what is coming up for me about my body and the way that I look and who I am. I, again, just was curious. I was like, “Okay, here’s what’s going on here.”

Fast forward, a couple of days later on the trip, we decided we were going to do this excursion where we were going to go swim with sharks. It was something that my brother- in-law had already done with some of his kids. Initially, it’s going to be where we’re in this cage and oh, this is going to be so fun.

I will be very frank with you, I get anxiety in the water. It’s not that I don’t know how to swim, It’s just I get in the water and for whatever reason, I get anxious. If you’re a spiritual person and you’re into past life stuff, I swear to you, in a past life, I must have drowned or something. If you’re not into that, ignore that. It just doesn’t make logical sense why I have anxiety in the water. Nothing has happened to me, I just get anxious. I’ve done similar excursions in the past. On my honeymoon when we were in Bora Bora, my husband and I did a private tour where we went swimming with sharks and stingrays and fish and all this other stuff.

I had anxiety, but my husband was with me the entire time because, again, it was a private tour. When he would get off the boat, he would get in the water and then he would immediately wait for me. Then I would get in the water and I would get anxious and snorkel with him. Of course, I also had a life jacket on. There is really very little way that I could drown, but it was just a lot of being in the water and then being around these animals. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, can I fully trust that these animals aren’t going to hurt me?”

In other instances, it had worked. I had my anxiety, but I was able to push through it, but in this shark excursion, it ended up shifting where we weren’t going to be in a cage. We were going to swim fully with the sharks. Even then, my brother-in-law is nervous because he hadn’t done something like this. The kids are nervous. My daughter’s there, too, and she’s never snorkeled before, but she has this tendency too to be overly confident about things. Then she gets out there and then she gets hurt. I was just having a lot of anxiety that day.

I didn’t initially even know if I was going to go, because after even I had gone in Bora Bora when we did the shark thing, yes, I was fine in the water, but the next day I had woken up and I was throwing up everywhere. In essence, I didn’t have food poisoning, I didn’t catch a bug, it was truly because it was just such an out of this world experience for me and so out of my comfort zone to go in the water and swim with those kinds of animals that my body just couldn’t handle it. I didn’t really know if I wanted to have that experience again, where I was just going to have to likely feel sick the next day, but it worked out that I was going to go on the boat and so I did and we’re going out there in this boat right.

It’s kind of wild, in essence, and I hate getting wet because the water was really cold and it’s saltwater and so it gets in your eyes and it stings. Again, the boat’s really crazy and I’m not used to being on a boat. That alone was a lot. Then we get out into the water where we’re going to get in the water with sharks and these sharks start coming up and you just see these gigantic sharks. I’m like, “Holy crap,” because we’re conditioned in the media, you know the movie Sharks, even of, I think that’s what it was called Sharks, but the movies of like, “duh na, duh na, duh na” (hums Jaws theme), and the sharks are going to come and they’re going to eat you and they’re going to tear you apart and eat you alive.”

That’s just so not true. Sharks are actually very calm creatures. Anyways, even though I know that logically, there’s a part of me, that’s like, “Holy shit, I’m about to get in the water with sharks.” I watched my husband get in first because I wanted him to get in first so that he could be there for my daughter. Then my daughter gets in and I’m watching her like a Hawk. I make her wear a life jacket too, but she’s just like loving it. She’s like, “Oh my gosh, mom, this is so cool,” and she does not freak out. She was not in over her head and I was like, “Oh, shit, she’s okay. It really looks like I’m going to be getting in the water.”

Then my brother-in-law and his kids get in and they’re all doing well and then it was like, “Okay, I’m the last one on the boat, am I going to get in?” I was like, “Okay, I’m going to get in, I’m going to do this. I’m going to be fine.” Then, my husband, he pops his head up from circling and he tells our guide, Taylor, he’s like, “Taylor, go get my wife and get off the boat.” There was a part of me that started to panic, a little bit of like, “Oh, oh my gosh, like I’m getting this special treatment. That’s right. I’m not really going in the water. Holy shit. What am I doing?”

Then I get in the water, she holds my hand. She takes me out there. I’m seeing these sharks. I’m seeing the depth of the ocean, which they had said was something like 350 feet. I start having a level 10 panic attack, level 10, like [gasps] like I can’t breathe. I’m looking up and every time I look up the panic attack subsides, but they had told us with the shark adventure, you have to keep your eyes on the water. You need to keep eye contact with the sharks because that helps them feel at peace with you. I’m putting my head up and I’m like, “Holy shit. I got to keep my head in the water,” so I put my head back in the water. I start having massive anxiety again and I was like, “Listen, I can’t do this.”I started swimming back to the boat, the captain pulls me up he’s like, “Great job. It doesn’t matter how long you lasted. You just did it.”

I was probably in the water maybe one whole minute to be honest, but it was so eye- opening for me because something I have been working on too recently and especially my embodiment coaching with Kaycee is that I always have this low-level anxiety and I don’t know why. I was able to see in that experience the depth of my anxiety of like, “Holy shit, I have level 10 anxiety that lives inside of me and here it is.” That could be a whole another episode on a whole another day about all of that, but I want to take it back to the shark adventure. Even my husband, he saw me get back on the boat. He pops his head up and he’s like, “Do you want me to come get you?” I said, “No, no, no, no, stay out there.”

I’m just back on the boat, I’m trying to catch my breath and take it in. I’m watching everyone have their fun and I feel like too I wasn’t disappointed in myself. I was so proud of myself. I didn’t have negative self-talk with that, but later when we got back to the house and we’re processing everything and I was like, “What was it about Bora Bora that allowed me to stay in the water and what was it about Hawaii that I wasn’t able to?” We came to the conclusion that it was because I had my husband there and he was holding my hand.

I knew that if something went really wrong, that I would be able to tell him and he would be able to help me. In this adventure, I had gotten off the boat. I was by myself. My husband was like, I don’t know, a couple of feet away and I would have had to some other- –

I was just really scared that my anxiety was going to get me to a place where I couldn’t breathe and I would, in essence, drown, even with the life vest on. I know, I don’t know, our brains are crazy sometimes. I realized in that moment, “Oh my God, there are moments that I actually need my husband.” Again, it was like another piece of my wall started to come down of like, “Lindsay, let him in. You don’t have to be like this bad-ass bitch even though I love this podcast of unstoppable woman, it doesn’t mean that you can do everything for yourself.” Again, logically I knew the stuff that I needed to fill it in my body.

I started to just like, take that in of, “Wow. Not only do I really need him, but I deeply love him. I do deeply, deeply love this man and why is it that I’m always trying to criticize him and say that he’s not growing fast enough and seeing what’s wrong with him?” Like Lindsay, “You’ve got to let that go.” I’m taking that in and from that, some things happen with my body that I don’t really know if I need to get into that there. In essence, what happened is I could feel the night after the shark adventure, I woke up and I couldn’t sleep because I was just still trying to integrate the experience and I could feel tingling down in my vaginal area and I told my body, I said, “Whatever you need to get out of my body, get it out.”

The next day I woke up with a UTI or otherwise known as a bladder infection and yeast infection. It’s crazy because I knew that by me having those experiences in my lady parts, people call it vagina, vulva, whatever, I call it vagina for right now because it’s internal stuff, I knew too I was like shutting this layer of not being in my feminine energy with him because I was like, “Oh, I have this wall. I can do everything myself, yada, yada, yada.” Again, that could be a whole another episode, but going back to this body stuff, you’re like, “Lindsay, why are you telling me this long story about the body stuff?”

What has happened since? Remember when I said we had that moment at the hotel where we could be intimate and we weren’t and all that self-talk came up for me. I came home and I’ve just been really taking in like, “What the hell happened in Hawaii? What was that growth?” Because again, I had gone into Hawaii saying, “Okay, I’m going to step into this new layer of me. I’m going to fully, be Lindsay, 5.0. I’m in essence getting an update. What really happened there?” I had a session with Kaycee where I just talked about the Hawaii experience and I integrated it even more of what had happened. As time has gone on now, it’s been two weeks since we’ve been back, I’ve integrated it even more.

What has come up for me, especially the past few days, has been what feels like this last layer of shit about the way that I look in order for me to fully just be vulnerable, physically, emotionally, mentally with my husband and what came up the most was stuff around my breasts. Now, if you’ve listened to the show or you’re a client of mine, you know I have done work around my breasts. I am not a chesty person. In regards to society standards, I believe my bra size at this time is probably like a 32b. I need to go get measured again because I had a baby and nursed and lost weight and all this stuff. I believe I’m about a 32b, if that gives you any kind of insight. I’m just not, a society’s standards, chesty person.

That has always been something that has played my mind of, “Lindsay you are not beautiful because you are not chesty. There’s something wrong with you. You’re not proportional.” For whatever reason, the past few days it’s just really been loud as I’ve been clearing out these layers of like, “Yes, I’m going to let my husband in, I’m going to let the wall down.” My God, it has been loud. Luckily I had a session a few days ago with Kaycee and I just let it out. I was like, “I’ve heard in Hawaii the shit that I tell myself about my looks, especially my body and my breasts, and I just need a session to just like fully talk about this,” and so we did. I really went there and I let my inner critic talk in essence.

I was like, “Lindsay, you are not attractive. You are disgusting.” Kaycee even questioned me. She was like, “You don’t think you’re attractive at all,” and I was like, “No, I’m just ugly,” and I just let it all out. Even though logically I knew the stuff wasn’t true, it was like, I needed to vomit that word, those words out and get them out of my body. In that moment, it felt so real, all the stuff I was telling myself. Even the next day, we had a group session for my living the dream group program and I just happened to attend a session that Kaycee was leading. She did a meditation about stepping into your divine feminine power.

My inner critic was just still really strong on that session of, “Lindsay, look at you, you’ve got all these toxic traits,” and dah, dah, dah, and she just was nasty. Then the day after that, I have a session with Alyssa and we were going to be talking about something else. When we started the session, I was like, “Alyssa, I know we’re supposed to talk about this today, but I really want to talk about the diet industry and about messaging we get as women toward our body because I feel like I’m finally ready to fully look at this bullshit industry and I’m starting to fully see how fucking toxic it is.”

We did and we spent the hour and we were unpacking all of these messages that I felt I had been getting. The biggest one for me is that unless you’re an hourglass figure, no matter what size you are, even if you’re a size 25, if you have an hourglass figure, you are still considered beautiful. I will tell you, I believe this because even when I see things in the media now of like, “Oh, we’re being more inclusive,” and this past week, for example, sports illustrated had a catwalk and they let curvier girls in there and girls that weren’t fully toned and all that, but everyone that they showcase still had an hourglass figure. I was like, “See, here it is.” It’s like society’s like, “Oh, yes, we’ll accept any size now, but we still only want hourglass figures.”

We just unpacked that over and over about different ways and messaging and what came out of that session was a couple of things for me that I want to share here, in essence, to help you start to maybe shift some things about you and your looks. One of my biggest takeaways is we were going through how I look from top to bottom. We were checking in with each area of do I feel it’s authentic. We’re going up to my hair, “Do I feel it’s authentic that I dyed my hair blonde?” At this time, my answer is yes. I like my hair blonde and I like it long. Going down to my lashes. I get my lashes done, “Do I feel that’s authentic?” Yes. Sometimes I get Botox, “Do I feel that’s authentic?” Yes.

We’re going down. Then once we get to my breasts, “Do I feel it’s authentic the way that I showcase my breasts?” Because too I’ve been doing this embodiment work, I now know what it feels like in my body when something is yes and something is a no. Everything in my body said no. That’s because I often wear padded bras, I wear bras that make me look bigger than what I am. I told Alyssa, I was like, “No, I do not represent myself in my breasts authentically,” I said, “but here’s the thing, if I do that none of my clothes are going to fit because I don’t fill them out in the chest. That’s just what I have to do.”

She’s like, “Let’s talk at that a different way.” She’s like, “What if instead of you going in, and you’re trying on these clothes, and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s something wrong with my body. I need to fix my body in order for the clothes–‘ you shift it to, ‘Actually, there’s something wrong with the clothes. These clothes aren’t a good fit for my body,’ ?” I will tell you, that shift was fucking powerful for me. I realized my entire life granted post- puberty, when I started to get breasts, I’ve always gone in and been like, “Oh, yes, this doesn’t fit here. Okay, well, I’m just going to have to wear this sort of bra in order for it to fit,” versus being like, “No, I’m actually not going to accept these clothes that you’re offering me. If I am going to select those clothes, and I’m going to go get them altered so that they do fit my body,” which again, I think goes back to a recent podcast episode called Authentic Styling, where I interviewed stylists, Delia and Alison, which if you haven’t listened to that one, it’s so great to supplement this episode because she talks about that.

All of our clothing is about our fit, the fit of the clothes. I was hearing her voice as I was hearing Alyssa’s voice of like the fit, the fit, the fit, the fit, and I just had this really powerful shift in that coaching session of, “Yes, it’s the clothes,” and Alyssa had shared with me that she has recently gone braless the past year and Alyssa is a chesty woman. She’s like, “I walk out and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, maybe my breasts are saggy, or this or that,’ but it’s really allowed me, Lindsay, to just love my body.” I was so inspired by that. I was like, “Yes, there have been times I’ve wanted to go braless.” Granted I can. I have a chest size I don’t really need a bra.

I did it once very briefly and I ran back to the room, and I put on a bra because it just felt way too uncomfortable. I challenged myself, this is on Wednesday when I had the session with Alyssa and I was like, “Okay, the next day, I’m going to go braless.” I show up to work and granted, I work in an office space where everybody rents out different rooms so there’s many different businesses here. They’re not my co-workers, but I’m around people. I show up to this office building and I want to add that too, this is a nice office building, people are usually pretty dressed up here. I show up in a T-shirt with no bra and jeans.

I come in my office granted, I’m not around a lot of people during the day, but people did see me. I ended up having two different client calls where I’m on video and I’m braless and the whole day, the amount of shit my mind told me about my body and my breasts was so loud. It was almost unbearable how loud it was. I was so massively uncomfortable I cannot even begin to tell you how uncomfortable it felt. It truly felt like I was naked the entire day and I was showing my naked body to the world. That’s just [laughs] how dramatic it felt in my mind.

What happened is I got on Instagram in the evening time as I had gone on most of the day with this and I just started to talk and I was like, “Here’s what’s going on for me. I’m at this place where I want to love and accept my body and my breasts and I’ve gone braless and it feels mostly uncomfortable and it’s just part of growth so if you’re growing in that way, just know the massive uncomfortableness is part of it.” I started to get all of these DMs. DM after DM from women like, “Lindsay, I feel that way about my stomach,” or, “Lindsay, I feel that way about my legs,” or, “Lindsay, I feel this way about–” da-da-da-da-da and I was like, “Holy shit,” because some of these women that were messaging me too they, to me have fabulous breasts, but yet, their mind then goes to, “Well, your stomach, or your legs, or your ass, or this or that.”

Again, I just kind of took in and I was like, “Yes, this is the shit we put up with as women.” We are just subtly or not subtly told day after day, how we need to look one certain way and if we don’t meet that, or even if we do meet that, it’s like, our brain can just not shut it off. I’m just sitting there and I’m observing all these messages coming in. It went back to what Alyssa and I were coaching on the day prior about no matter really what body we have, we’re going to criticize it no matter what because of the shit society tells us and I was just seeing it in the flesh. I was like, “Holy shit, this is what we do.”

I will tell you that night when I’m driving home from work because this was a long workday for me, I’m driving home about nine o’clock at night, it was like the clouds had parted and the thoughts finally started to diminish about how shitty my body was. I was reminded of something Stacey Boehman said once on one of her podcasts and granted Stacey Boeham is a business coach for life coaches, and she talks often about going to networking events and introducing yourself as a life coach, and how scary it’s going to feel at first and then she says something like, “After you do it, you’re going to show your brain like, ‘Hey, we didn’t die, we don’t need to be as nervous as what we are.'”

I was reminded of that story. In that moment of, “Wow, my brain was just totally freaking out that I was, in essence, going to die, which in essence, the real thought was that I was going to be so socially rejected because I don’t meet this certain beauty standard.” I realized, like, “No, people don’t really care, they don’t really care. If they do care what I look like, that’s their own shit. We’re all in this together.” Again, logically, I fucking knew this shit, but it was just like a new layer of really just feeling through this in my body. I will tell you, I came home and I was like, “I’m done. I am done. I am so done criticizing the way that I look. I’m just fucking done.”

It was like, I needed that massive discomfort of that entire day, going braless to finally just be like, “This is the shit that I’ve been so scared of. It’s really not that fucking scary and I am so tired of spending my mental energy around my fucking body, and or about something else of my looks.” Because it’s not just my body, sometimes it’s about my nose, or about my chin, or many other things. I’m just done with this shit. I came home and during the day, when the voice had been really loud, I sat down with a journal and I had put on the top of the page, My body. I’d written all the negative thoughts I think about. Things like I’m not proportional, I look like a boy, I’m not beautiful bla bla bla bla bla.

The big thing that was really loud was the thought that I’m not proportional and that my clothes aren’t going to fit if I don’t wear a bra. What I started to do is I started to try on all my clothes. Miraculously, they actually fit and some of them that didn’t fit, it would be like, “Yes, I just take it to a tailor, I get a little tweak here, a little tuck here and it’ll fit.” I started to tell my husband, “Here’s what’s going on for me, this is how I feel,” and I did a fashion show for him. I was like, I really want you to be honest with me.” He just held this beautiful space for me to try on these clothes and some of these clothes. I like to wear a lot of lace sometimes. Some of these clothes, I put on this lace stuff, and I had no undergarment with it.

In essence, it was like basically, I was topless. I would come out and I would show him and he was like, “Oh my gosh babe, that is so sexy and so hot.” Granted too we don’t want to look to external people to make us feel better. It tied into this work I’m doing with my marriage and letting my wall down and all that. It was just a beautiful place to be able to grow in this way and have him be a part of it if that makes any sense whatsoever. Because I know for a lot of my clients when I’m working with them, it’s me and them and it’s like, “Okay, you’re going to work on this, you’re going to do this thing.”

I don’t want them dependent on external people and circumstances to do the work but where I’m at now and I’ve been teaching my more advanced clients this is something with Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. If you’re familiar with that, you know the top of Maslow’s triangle is self-actualization and being like, “Yes, I love myself. I own myself. I’m in the highest of my potential.” What I’ve been learning as I’ve been doing deeper research is Maslow took his hierarchy of needs off of (I’m going to butcher the name) but it was some Indian tribe. I don’t know if it’s Cherokee, but he took it off of some tribe and didn’t credit them.

What their triangle was, was that self-actualization was actually at the bottom. Then beyond that was being in your community and these other layers. I realized too as I’ve learned that it’s like self-actualization is actually just the beginning. Because after self- actualization, then it’s like inviting other people into your world as a self-actualized person. I just feel like that’s where I’m at right now of really allowing my husband to be in this space with me. It’s not in a way of being needy or having him make me feel better. It’s truly at a place of like, “This is my next level of growth.” I hope that makes sense to you.

Going back to my body stuff and realizing I’m done talking to myself this way, I’m done with this shit. I’m tired of getting these DMs. I was getting DMs from women too who are like, “Yes, I’ve had lipo, I’ve had breast implants, I’ve done a tummy tuck, I’ve done this and I will tell you, Lindsay, it still doesn’t go away.” Again, I just got massively sad. I got massively sad for us as women and too as I’m telling my husband some of these things of like, “Here’s the messages I’m getting, and here are the thoughts I’ve been thinking.”

He’s like, “What is it? Because men get messages too. If we look on the TVs, most men look pretty similar. They’re pretty well-built and they have a role generic look just like the women do but men tend to not really take that to mean that much.” My husband was like, “What is it about women?”

I’ve been thinking deeper about that and I’ve been thinking more about some other things I’ve been really working on which is understanding autism and ADHD because I’ve mentioned on another episode. I think I’m on the spectrum for both of those things. What’s been interesting in that research is it’s really hard to diagnose women with both of those things because women are so good at masking things.

Again, I’ve just really taken in that piece with, “Why is it that women and their bodies are harder on themselves?” Here’s my theory on it. As women, we’re so intuitive. I don’t know if there is a conditioning that we have at some point for us to want to please others or if it’s just in our natural DNA. I don’t know but we do. We want to please others more. We want others to like us more. With that, we take society’s messaging about our body or something else on a very deep level of like, “This is who I need to be in the world in order to be liked and wanted and accepted.”

I just think as women, that’s what the issue is here is we’re just again, so intuitive or we want to be liked so deeply because I think it really is going back to like a DNA thing more than even just societal messages. Societal messages definitely are on top of that.

Because I see even with little, little, little baby girls, they do this and we take these messages about our bodies and our looks and everything else and we just feel it on a deep cellular level. We sit around and we bash ourselves. Again, I’m done. I’m done. I will tell you, it’s been three, four days now since I’ve had that kind of aha and really being like I’m done and I’ve just felt such a massive shift.

I haven’t worn a bra once since then and I don’t have any drama about it. Even today, I’m not even wearing nipple covers today. I’m just like, “Fully me.” I’m wearing a tight shirt so you can actually totally see my nipples through it. Granted, now I’m in my office and nobody’s here. It’s on a Sunday afternoon. I’m not going to see anybody at my office but I am going to go get my nails done later and people are going to see me and I have very little drama about that. I share all of these stories with you today because I just felt like this was what the message was that you needed to hear today. I hope that you have some takeaways from these stories that you will be able to apply in your own life.

I will say that I do deeply believe that you loving the way that you look takes intentional bodywork. Be it with Kaycee or maybe you work with me and Kaycee’s involved in that or you find your own healers and teachers to help you with bodywork, but it’s just been deeply transformative for me to fully get in my body. Too, I think the mindset piece is out in that too. I will say that Kaycee, doesn’t just do bodywork. She does mindset work. Obviously, I do a ton of mindset work and mindset is part of that, of, “What’s going on in my mind, in my body to feel the way that I feel about my body and my looks or anything else?”

This work is just so beautiful my friends. Really, my hope, my prayer for you today is that you get to a place where you just deeply love yourself. I know too, I want to say this is, there are times when I hear other women who get on and say, “Oh yes. I have this with my body and this with my body.” I’ll be very frank with you. The thought that goes in my head sometimes with some of these women is, “Fuck you, Becky, or fuck you, Susan.” Whatever her name is. If your name is Becky or Susan, I’m sorry. I actually have a client named Becky. Becky, I’m not talking to you. It’s just because then what goes on is like–

For me, it’s always been about breasts. “Well, you have great breasts.” You’re going to say it almost seems like I can’t even accept when other women criticize their bodies because I

see in them what I admire and I want in myself. I can feel that off of some people that even me coming on here and saying, “Oh, it’s my breasts, my breasts, my breasts.” Your brain will easily go to, “Yes, Lindsay, but you’re relatively thin,” or “Yes, Lindsay, but you have this or you have that I that want, so fuck you,” or in essence, “Your body image isn’t as bad as mine,” or it’s easier for you to shift out of it because you have all these other things.

I just want you to be aware of that because it’s a bullshit answer your brain is giving you. It’s just bullshit. I really hope you see that because truly my friend, we are all in this together. Again, I hope and I pray for you. I’m holding my heart right now as I say this that you get to a place where you love the way that you look deeply because this isn’t just impacting your own self-confidence, this is likely impacting your career. It’s likely impacting your relationships. It’s impacting every area of your life. I have known that but I am seeing it more and mo re.

Again, I just really hope that there was something today that inspired you, allowed you to shift, and get to a place where you are going to do the work to love your body because now I’m feeling like I’m just on this other side of it. I feel like I’ve had this massive transformation and damn, it feels incredible. It’s almost like looking back at the last 36 years of my life and like, “Man, I wish I would have done this work so much sooner.” Of course, everything happens for a reason but it’s just a beautiful place. Sending you so much massive love today. I just feel called to tell you how much I love you.

Even if I’ve never met you, I deeply, deeply love you. I love your being, I love who you are, every part of you. I hope you continue on your journey of growing and healing and loving the way that you look because my friends, it is worth it, it is worth the discomfort, it is worth the tears, it is worth going through all of the feelings to get to this place. I’m sure I’m not done but I’m really loving where I’m at right now. All right, I’ll see you next time.

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Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.

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