Date #12

Practices

KEY ACTIVITY

I hope that you are enjoying The Body Confidence Project.

I hope that you are already feeling better about yourself, or at least more open to that possibility.

Would you like to keep feeling better after the end of these 30 dates?

If your answer is yes, then I need something from you.

Or rather, Cavebrain needs something from you.

Some time every day to develop a practice.

What Do You Mean By ‘Practice’?

A practice is a daily habit: one or more things you do to achieve a certain goal. Many people have a meditation practice to calm their Cavebrains down. They usually label this mindfulness or similar.

Your body confidence practice has two aims:

#1 To send a message to Cavebrain that it is accepted by the tribe, specifically that your body is acceptable.

#2 To send a message to Cavebrain that it is not in danger.

What Do You Do For Your Practice?

At the moment, these 30 dates are your practice. However, I want you to start developing your own practice alongside them well before date #30, so that this time next month The BCP is something alive and kicking that you are making an integral part of your life going forward, and not just another once-shiny new thing you got off the internet that was fun for a bit.

Here is a daily body confidence practice to try:

#1 Meditation/breathing/relaxation audio

Choose one of these for a minimum of 5 minutes

#2 Body confidence role models (see date #1) - look through your Instagram feed or do a Google image search ‘plus size models’ for 2 to 5 minutes. NB If you look at Instagram every day anyway, then you can drop this from your practice.

IMPORTANT: Do It At The Same Time Every Day

You will embed your practice into your day much faster and start doing it without thinking if you do it at the same time every day. I do mine when I wake up.

That’s it. 7 to 15 minutes. Let’s talk from now on about 10 minutes for the sake of simplicity.

Other Practices

The above practices you do in one block of time (at the start of the day preferably).

Other activities you want to make as regular as possible are:

#1 Physical activity and increasing effort (choose how many times a week)

#2 She looks great (daily if possible - depending on how often you go out)

#3 Mirror work (daily)

You can make sure these become second nature by keeping a record of them. See below for a sheet I have created for you.

What If I Have No Time?

Wouldn’t it be great if I had some quick ‘n easy answer to this?

Spoiler alert: I don’t.

If you don’t do your practice, Cavebrain will be on alert.

If you do your practice, Cavebrain will be calmer and happier.

That seems to me to be something worth prioritising.

So the question is not: What if I have no time?

The question is: How do I make those 10 minutes a priority?

A good way to do this is imagine Marty McFly and Doc Brown bursting into the room right now and saying “Jeez, we’re sorry but we’ve messed up the space time continuum real bad (it’s worse than Back To The Future part 2, and we all know what a pile of doggy doo da THAT was)"

Somehow we’ve gone and lost 10 minutes from every day. The ten minutes will disappear from each day at the same time: ...... O’clock (now insert a time that you are at home and awake and not at work. For example I might say 7.50 to 8am)

Exit Marty and Doc.

If you really did lose 10 minutes every day, and knew it in advance, you would work around it, wouldn’t you? You’d still get all the important stuff done.

Good news! I’m giving you those ten minutes back.

Use them wisely. Use them to calm Cavebrain down.

What To Do On This Date

First of all, decide when you can take 10 minutes every day to do the meditation/relaxation audio plus theta plus role models practice block (suggested time: 10 minutes).

Next, print off or copy out the practices record. I have created both Word and PDF versions for you here:

Practices Record PDF Version

Practices Record Word Version

Now do as many of the practices on the sheet as possible right now to give yourself the best start.

Make a note in your diary of the time you are going to do the 10 min practices block every day.