Episode 11 Self Love, Holiday Clothes and Selfies

This episode is all about the clothes we pack and wear on holiday and how that influences us and our levels of happiness and self-love.  

I also chat about hiring a stylist, selfies, photos, laughing, and memories. 

I hope you take something away from this which helps you.

I'm taking on one on one clients at the moment,
my website

www.chloegrahammindsetcoach.com
Instagram @chloegrahamofficial 

Transcript

0:00

Hello, I'm back from holiday and ready to record episode 11 for you on self love holiday clothes, and that post holiday diet Hello, and welcome back to my show, I actually had a couple of clients. So clearly hurry up and record another one we're running out of stock to listen to Will you please record another one. And it's kind of given me the kick up the bum to do another one. Because I don't know why I seem to get into this hole, I can't do it, it's too hard, I need to plan it out, it's going to take ages to plan. And that combined with what my coach was saying about one of the archetypes that we've been delving into the saboteur is I need to have all of the answers, I need to have a plan, it needs to be perfect, before I can go and create rather than stepping into the archetype, archetype of the magician, where you just trust and believe in yourself and create the magic without the notes and the plan. So this is recorded completely off the cuff, there has been no planning only the odd thought about it, and no notes in front of me. And so this might be a whole load of verbal diarrhoea, and I might delete it, or it's going to be amazing. So the story I want to tell you today, because the episodes I've done on self love and clothes did really well. And it's obviously resonating with some women who struggle with that and feeling good in clothes, feeling like they did feel comfortable and look good. Because quite often people seem to put them on opposite ends of the scale. And then also, how do we move into that self love when it comes to the clothes. And after those two episodes that I spoke about my journey and my struggle, I wanted to add a third aspect to it when that comes up when we go want to go on holiday. And there's some pre holiday things, there's the pre holiday diet that we do, or try to do. And to be honest, yes, I tried to do one as well, because I didn't succeed, because I was at the top end of my normal range anyway. And I felt that going on at a holiday at the top range already could trigger some uncomfortable feelings. Now I didn't manage the diet Did I beat myself up. Not really, I would have loved to have been more comfortable and able to wear more of my clothes, and have more of my wardrobe accessible to me. But I didn't take really take it any further than there or go to any drastic measures, like tin soup for days, or 800 calorie diets like I did a decade ago. So diet before holiday didn't work. But I'm you know, I'm not beating myself up over it. When it comes to packing for holiday. There's that huge mad rush that we are used to have. And luckily, I've been able to step out of it of buying a whole load of new clothes to wear on holiday. And I'm not sure whether it's connected to we want the clothes to give us the feeling of feeling good. And if we look good, we feel good, but it's coming from a new place with new clothes. Whereas new clothes can be really hit or miss. And there's a lot of regret that comes with buying a lot of clothes. And I find that the most comfortable amazing clothes that I have are the ones that have stood the test of time. And I've worn them 1000 times and I love them to pieces and they fit and they're comfortable. So why we feel the need to become this totally new person. And we're new things that we haven't sort of tested out on our body and our identity might not be the best way forward. And instead of spending that money and the panic like same with first date, the panic of buying clothes, before first date because we want to feel our best. Feel this like the clothes will give us the confidence when actually it comes from within. I think we will be better spent spending the time on the feelings that we want to build up within ourselves and the feeling into the body of how we're going to create those feelings and that self confidence and building that up which is an entirely different sort of skill set and way way more helpful I think as we go into holiday And why the other thing when it comes to packing for a holiday is try absolutely everything on. Because there was some stuff that I wanted to pack, but I didn't fit into. So there was absolutely no point in taking them with me. So, yes, I still took too much. I took things like that took up a lot of room were a few pairs of heels. And I never actually ended up wearing heels. It was more sort of sandals and more relaxed and lots of walking shoes that I really needed, you know, sandals for walking around London and stuff like that. So everything had to be tried on. Everything had to form part of an outfit, not just a single piece of clothes that I loved. It had to be like, right, what am I going to wear with this? Am I comfortable in it. And then whilst I was a holiday, towards the end of the holiday, it was only two weeks long. And I wasn't sort of gorging. But I tried to put on a pair of shorts that I took with me that were a little bit tight before I went but they were I cut two pairs of shorts actually, that I couldn't even fit into when I tried them on two days before departure. And I could have let that ruin my the last couple of days of holiday. But I just put on a dress that look gorgeous and felt comfortable and wasn't tied around my waist. So we have a choice, we have a choice of how we feel. And what it means to us was I going to focus on the fact that now I've put on weight and couldn't fit into my shorts. No, because I just be grumpy, I'd probably try some drastic action in eating less and not being present with the people that I was on holiday with. And were they going to think anything different of me because I had a dress on rather than shorts. And I actually made a comment and laughed about it and said, Well, I went to put some shorts on but I couldn't fit into them. Clearly, I've enjoyed my holiday and we had a laugh. And then one of the people I was with say yep, I tried to put some shorts on the other morning and they didn't fit either. And then we just laughed about it. You know, just like that film Julia Roberts Eat, Pray Love and how much you know that scene where she's trying to put on and do up her jeans with her friend in Italy. And they're just laughing as they're trying to do up your jeans, if there's a point that you could get to where that's how you feel. And that your essence, your laugh, your smile, your energy has nothing to do with your pet size, then you've kind of won the battle. And then you can choose to exercise more or diet or anything because of how you healthy you want to feel. So that's where I'm at now. I've got back from holiday. And it's from a basis of health, that I want to be careful with what I eat and exercise more. I realised and it's got far worse because I never it never used to be like this. But I got a whole load of spots on my back while I was away because I let myself eat gluten, I didn't want to be sort of a fussy eater, I just wanted to it's actually surprising how little gluten free stuff I could find in Germany and England. I was really surprised by that as really surprised by the reaction. But yeah, my skin, you know, my chin on my hands and on my back and on my chest just blew up with spots, unfortunately, because I was eating lots of gluten while I was away. But so that's one of the reasons why I'm going to reset and go back to gluten free and look after myself is because of my skin and it's not comfortable. It's itchy and going back to walking and building in some exercise again, it's because of how good I feel when I'm doing those things. Rather than this panic. I have to sort it by next week, drastic weight loss. You know, poking at my fat in the mirror, standing in a really bad posture zooming in on the bits that we hate putting on the tight clothes and bullying ourselves into losing the weight. I adored my holiday. I ate with my friends and family I drank wine with them. And data those are the memories that I'm gonna remember. Rather than hating what I saw in the mirror and now I'm back. I'm still not going to hate what I see in the mirror. I'm just going to look after myself. Give myself buckets of love and self care. And I know that the more I focus on where I'm going, rather than hating where I'm at, or what I've done wrong in the past, is going to drive me to create new healthy habits that will elevate my vibration, my habits, my energy towards creating and being in the life that I want. You know, it's all about the journey, it's not about the destination. And that brings me back to the, my boyfriend at the time loss left me when I was the skinniest and slimmest I've ever been. So if there's anything that kind of says, It doesn't matter what you look like, within reason, you know, we're loved for who we are, we're love for our whole being, we're not loved for the clothes that we fit into. The other thing I want to talk about is taking photos of ourselves on holiday, and then deleting all of them, because we might look fat or it's a bad angle. There are two parts to that, like, photos are so beautiful for memories and looking back. And quite often we're like, Why was I worrying about myself then, and you can look back with kindness, when you have the gift of time. So there is a huge thing in going. I know this feels uncomfortable right now, I know that this feels yucky and out of my comfort zone. But I the memories mean more to me. And I'm going to allow myself and give myself the gift of these memories when I'm older in a year, five years, 10 years or whatever. But keep the memories and don't care about what you look like in them. Because again, the memory is far more important than how you look in the photo. And then another thing is actually there is a skill to looking confident and posing in photos and that I actually have zero problem with two people that I suggest following that can really help you with this is one of them was Saarela more. She's an Australian living mostly in Iceland, but she's travelled around the world. And she's got this programme called selfie University. And she's made a lot of money off it but she two things she said, photos are a huge part of our life. And you can either stay looking shit on them and delete them all. Or you can learn how to take your best photo. Sidenote, just as I hired a stylist and it was the best money I ever spent because she showed me my colour palette. Because we can walk into shops and see a photo of a model on a wall and go wow, that dress looks amazing. And go and buy it. And then the colours are completely wrong for us. Because the you know, there's the for spring, summer winter autumn colour palettes. And when she came round, she held the colours up to my face, like three of them made me look grey. Nice and ill. And then the other one was like I had a beautiful flower under my face, you know that glow that warmth. And that now means I waste far less money on clothes, because I know the colours suit me. So highly, highly recommend doing that. But then also so you learn. It's a skill to be comfortable on camera without all the filters and everything else especially like full body shots. Check out Terrell, she says Photos are a part of our lives, they're going to be a part of our lives. So it's about learning what poses suit us just like what colours suit us. It's a skill and it's worth learning. And there's another one Hey, Nicole Wong on Instagram, that's her handle. And she teaches you how to pose. And that's nothing to do with what you weigh, how tall you are, whatever. It's about how you pose to show off your best assets to show yourself off in the best possible way. And again, that sort of skill. And it's more than just you know, going on tippy toe and putting one leg in front and then a hand on your hip and shoulder back or something. There's a lot more to it. And it's can be incredibly empowering when you learn how to do this. Because you're not changing yourself. You're just learning how to stand. And that'll increase your chance of loving photos. I would also suggest looking at Searles travel videos from maybe 2019 And before she just wow she will make you want to travel the world as well as taking beautiful photos of yourself. I highly, highly, highly recommend her because this is a thing, isn't it? It's about creating the memories creating the self love that we want to be in the photos no not just the landscape photos, but we are taking photos of ourselves while we're on holiday in clothes that make us feel good. And it's nothing to do with our weight. I have a framed photo of myself in Zion National Park. In my office, I'm looking at it right now. And it was one of those Fluke photos I've, it's someone looking down from a higher rock onto the rock that I'm standing on, got a smile on my face, I look good in the clothes that I'm wearing. I've got my hands on my hip, and I just look really, really happy. And I wish I had 1000 more of those. Was I so much skinnier than I am now? No, that's got nothing to do with it. It was the fact that I someone took a great photo of me. And the way to take more great photos is to learn how to pose and to learn how to stand confidently and smile and just own it, own it own own it. So even in our day to day lives, we can create memories with our friends. And even in a you know, Nicole's got, how to take good photos in a coffee shop or a restaurant. So those photos that we take with our friends and then delete because we look fat or our arms or my god, the side photo, especially if we're on the end of the four and we're trying to hide our arms. And we think that they're 10 times bigger than they actually are. An arm is an arm. And I think there's a lot of self love that needs to go into our arms. Because we think that they all have to look like Jennifer Aniston's arms, or Michelle Obama's. It's like, oh my god, let's all give some love to our arms in photo. But yeah, this is what we can learn. This is what we can lean into. This is what we can change the story about what if we tell ourselves we can reframe it into zooming out and looking at the picture as a whole and not picking ourselves apart in it, look at the memory represents look at the other people in the photo, keep the photo and take more of them. And enjoy your holiday. wear the clothes that make you feel comfortable. I hope this has helped. I hope this has given you some jumping off points. And if you want some help with this and you're struggling on how to reframe it do reach out. I am available for one on one coaching. I've got some other courses on other topics coming out shortly that you might be interested in as well. So if you want to follow me on my Instagram, I'm Chloe Graham official on there. And you can keep a look out. And you can send me a message or so to get started on a one on one coaching to help you find this magnificent. Julia Roberts laugh as you pull up your pants. sending you a big hug. And remember to do something today that makes yourself proud. Even if it's promising something tiny in a baby step. I promise to have three glasses of water today. Do it and then say I'm proud of you afterwards because the power in that stuff. You cannot underestimate the power of that. Big Love. Big hugs. And I'll speak to you next time.