My Blog

22 Iffirmations to Get a Beach Body (nope, that’s not a typo)

No one talks about having a “mountain body” or a “camping body,” but lots of people talk about having a “beach body.” It has become important to us, as a society, to shrink our bodies by June so we can look “acceptable” in our summer clothes. For this reason alone, millions of us dread summer instead of being able to enjoy it. It is now firmly summer, and too many of us believe our bodies aren’t small enough. We believe our arms, legs, bellies, etc. are “too big” to be seen by others, so we won’t wear short sleeves or

Body Neutrality: How to Stop Hating Your Body

Do you love your body? Me either.

But here’s the thing: I also don’t hate it. I’ve learned that what my body looks like is irrelevant to me living a fulfilling life.

Learn how to improve your body image with a radically different approach. Learn how to be body neutral.

You Are Needed

Here’s the way I see it: Everyone in the world is standing in front of a huge wall. We’re all painting a mural, collectively, on this wall. And each one of us is painting with our own unique color. Your specific, unique color is needed here. If we all had the same color, our mural wouldn’t be very interesting. It would just be one big boring block of some color that we’re all kind of sick of. If we were all the same, life wouldn’t be very interesting. There would be nothing special about anyone. You may not see how

How to Handle Your Inner Critic When She Gets Loud

Who is Your Inner Critic? Are you familiar with your inner critic? She’s the voice in your head telling you that you’re not good enough, that you’re unworthy, and that you’re ugly and stupid and no one will ever love you or hire you. She’s the voice telling you that you need to change yourself in order to be acceptable. Your inner critic is the mean girl you carry with you everywhere you go. She’s there when you wake up, she’s right in your face as you get dressed, and she becomes particularly loud every time you consider taking a

Body Respect: How the heck are we supposed to respect our bodies??

When it comes to options for how we feel about our bodies, most of us are aware of the body hatred and body positivity options. Some are aware of body neutrality, where the focus is not whether we love or don’t love our body’s appearance, but rather the purpose of our body, which is to allow us to live. For most of us, body hatred is a given and body positivity feels impossible. Body neutrality is more conceivable, but still very challenging. It is really freaking hard to have a decent relationship with our bodies!! I’ve got a fourth option

46 Iffirmations to Change Your Life (nope, that’s not a typo)

One of my favorite mindset-management tools are iffirmations. Nope, not affirmations. Iffirmations. Affirmations are also mindset-management tools. Affirmations are statements that we are trying to get our brains to believe. “I am good enough.” is an affirmation. Many of us hear that affirmation and have an automatic “Yeah, right.” reaction. In other words, our brain’s first response is to reject it because it sounds so implausible. This is in part because it’s a statement. Statements give our brain no wiggle room – we are either good enough or we’re not. Since we’ve spent years believing that we’re not good enough, our brain automatically selects that

How To Stay Out of Other People’s Heads

You do it. I definitely do it. We hang out in other people’s heads, trying to figure out what they’re thinking about us. We’re trying to create safety for ourselves, but we’re actually doing just the opposite. On a first date, we spend more time wondering what the other person thinks about us than what we think about them. With a good friend, we wonder if they think we’re being self-centered because we’ve been talking about our exciting new job for 15 minutes. Checking out at the grocery store, we spend the whole time wondering whether the cashier is judging

Ditch Your Scale for Better Health: The true connection between weight and health

Do you own a scale? How often do you weigh yourself? Why do you weigh yourself? Most of us step on the scale because we’re trying to lose weight or make sure we don’t gain any. We believe the scale tells us important information about our bodies and our health. We’re wrong. Yes, the scale tells us what we weigh. But it turns out that that is not actually important information, and it is rarely helpful. In fact, it is much more harmful than helpful. Pop quiz: Which one of these statements is false? Weight is an indicator of health.

2 Tools to Help You Manage Overwhelming Feelings

Feelings can be HARD. The ones that are uncomfortable or painful are just so … uncomfortable and painful. They feel bad and can be overwhelming to the point that we can’t feel or focus on anything else. We get stuck in them. So, how do we manage overwhelming feelings? We can’t just make them go away or decide not to feel them. Feelings don’t work like that. The trick is to make room for them. Our instinct is to do the opposite – we want to squash painful feelings, but when we try, they tend to get more intense. If

Suzanne Manser, PhD

Licensed Psychologist