Nov. 19, 2025

Body Image Mindset Series, Part 2: Design the Way You See Yourself

What Do You Really Want to See When You Look in the Mirror? In this second episode of our subscriber-only Body Image Mindset Series, Cheryl guides you through a surprisingly simple but powerful exercise: deciding what you actually want your relationship with your body to be. Most of us walk around critiquing our bodies on autopilot — noticing every flaw, every angle, every “problem area” we think needs fixing. But very few of us ever stop to ask: What do I truly want to see when I look in the...

What Do You Really Want to See When You Look in the Mirror?

In this second episode of our subscriber-only Body Image Mindset Series, Cheryl guides you through a surprisingly simple but powerful exercise: deciding what you actually want your relationship with your body to be.

Most of us walk around critiquing our bodies on autopilot — noticing every flaw, every angle, every “problem area” we think needs fixing. But very few of us ever stop to ask:

What do I truly want to see when I look in the mirror?
How do I want to feel about myself?
What parts of me do I already think are beautiful?

Today’s episode slows everything down and helps you reset the direction your brain is headed. Because if you don't define where you’re going, your mindset won't magically wander there on its own.

This is a pen-and-paper episode — a journaling, brainstorming, “let me get honest with myself for a minute” episode. It’s gentle. It’s grounding. And it will absolutely shift how you move through the world.

In This Episode, We Explore:

Why you need a direction for your body image

We set goals for our careers, families, health, and finances — but we treat how we see ourselves like something that “just happens.” Today, you’ll begin defining what you want your self-image to be so your brain knows where to go.

The essential question: How do you want to see yourself?

Not a number. Not a size. Not a measurement.
Think: confident, vibrant, classic, strong, approachable, fun, stylish, athletic, magnetic.

You choose the words. You choose the vision.

Why writing down the negative thoughts matters

If your brain is shouting criticisms first, get them out. On paper. In ink.
Then? Rip that paper to shreds. It’s symbolic, yes — but it works.

How to identify your favorite features

Cheryl shares her own examples and then you’ll choose at least three features you love — and then practice noticing those first every time you see your reflection.

The “glimmer” concept applied to body image

Just like we train the brain to spot tiny moments of joy, we can train it to spot what we love about our bodies. The more your brain recognizes the good, the more it will look for it.

Reach out to Cheryl via email at bonus@cherylpfischer.com. (These are answered personally - not with a bot!)

Your Guided Journal Prompts From Today

How do I want to see myself?
Think adjectives, descriptors, the vibe you want to radiate.
How do I want others to see me?
Confident? Approachable? Dynamic? Strong? Elegant? Creative?
What are three (or more) features I genuinely love about my body?
These become your new “first stop” for your eyes.
What negative thoughts

Support the show

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💡Want menopause advice, mindset shifts, or support with midlife transformation?

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Let’s talk health after 50, self-talk, and redefining aging for women — without the “midlife crisis” narrative. Every week I'm adding new success strategies for midlife women.

Connect with Cheryl, Midlife Coach: Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

00:54 - Welcome And Series Context

02:45 - Why Inner Beliefs Shape Confidence

04:34 - Define How You Want To Be Seen

07:17 - Dump The Negative Self Talk

08:46 - Build A List Of Best Features

11:29 - Train Your Brain For Positives

13:31 - Rethinking Goals Beyond Weight

15:18 - Action Steps And Close

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Hello, Mindset Deep Dive.

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Thank you for joining me.

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So today is part two of our body image series that is happening right now on the Private Podcast.

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If you didn't catch part one, go back to wherever it is you're listening to these, which is probably Apple Podcasts mixed in with the public podcast or however you have set your episodes up and go and listen to episode one, which came out last week, and that would be oh my goodness, what day is it even?

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That would be November 12th, I think that one came out.

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So once you've done that, now part two is I want to give you some things to think about.

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And ideally, you think about these things with a pen and paper in hand, or a journal, or maybe the notes app on your phone open, and just write body image at the top, and we're gonna brainstorm.

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So today we're talking about with regard to how you feel about your body and how you believe your body to look, what do you really want?

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And the interesting thing about that is you've probably heard maybe me or other people at some point or another say to you, you have to decide where you really want to go with your career or how you really want your business to look or what you want your goal to be, because otherwise you're not gonna get there.

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If you don't know where you're going, how are you gonna get there?

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You've probably heard me or someone else say some version of that.

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But we don't think about it that way with our bodies, and even though maybe you don't want to focus on this all the time, maybe you just want to say, hey, my body's my body, I feel good about myself in general, here I go out into the world.

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It does matter what buried sort of beliefs and images you have of yourself deep in there, it does matter because what we're thinking inside in that subconscious brain is going to affect how we feel, and that's going to affect how we act out in the world.

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So if you've ever looked at someone and just thought, wow, I how how is she so confident?

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I mean, she's wearing jeans and a sweater, I'm wearing jeans and a sweater, but how is she she just looks so confident and amazing, and everyone's trying to look at her, and I don't understand the difference.

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The difference probably has to do with what's going on inside her head.

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Whew, I didn't say that very well, with what's going on inside her head.

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And that's why we're doing this series.

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So when I say what do you really want, I'm fine with you including a goal weight or a goal clothing size, but that's not exactly what I mean.

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That can be part of it.

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How do you want to see yourself?

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So I'm gonna give you some questions like this, and then when this episode is finished, I want you to take a few minutes and brainstorm and write it down.

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So, how what do I mean?

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How do we want to see ourselves?

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So I feel like we just treat the way we see ourselves as an accident, as if I just fell from outer space into this body and now I'm standing in front of the mirror.

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How did this happen?

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We don't think about it, right?

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But when you stand in front of a mirror, what do you want to see?

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And maybe you're thinking an athletic person, someone who looks young and hip and fit, or someone who looks professional, you're gonna need some words because we we have to kind of be able to put into words or phrase or a sentence.

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What do we want to be looking at?

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Well, I personally want to be looking at someone who is put together, who has kind of a classic style, who looks friendly and approachable, and also charismatic and interesting, somebody that I would want to know.

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Do you see what I'm saying?

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So, what comes to mind for you?

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How do you want to see yourself?

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Because I'll tell you what you don't want to write down is, you know, I what you often what we see ourselves as now.

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And in fact, if you have a piece of paper, you can make the here's how I don't want to see myself list, and then I'll tell you what to do with it when you're finished with it.

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But if all if all that is coming into your head is the bad stuff, let's write it down.

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Let's write it down.

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Not in a note on your phone, but on a piece of paper.

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So if you're looking in the mirror and you're thinking dumpy or like old clothes, wrinkled, not very interesting, I mean, bleh.

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You're you're criticizing certain features, your, you know, your waist size, your hip size, your legs, your chest, your your chin, your hair, whatever.

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You can write those negative things down if that's all you can get in your mind.

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Because sometimes we just have to get it out in order to then move back to the positive.

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So if you need to, get it out.

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You can even pause this for a minute.

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Get it out, write all the crap down.

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And then how do you want to see yourself?

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What do you want to be thinking when you look at yourself?

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And when what do you want other people to be thinking when they see you?

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Any adjectives you can think of, whatever comes to your mind, this is brainstorming.

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Whatever comes to your mind is the right answer and a good answer.

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Write it down.

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Because it's always true in life that if we don't have a direction we're going in, we're not going to get there.

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We're just going to meander around feeling like we're stuck and frustrated.

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And this is often how we treat our bodies.

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We meander around feeling like, man, I got stuck with this crappy, dumpy body.

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I guess I'm stuck.

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No, you're not.

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Because first of all, a lot of that is probably the angle that you're looking at yourself from and no one else sees it.

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And second of all, there's a lot you can do.

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All right, so now that you've started on this positive, how do I want to see myself list?

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Obviously, when this episode finishes, I want you to keep going with that.

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And then when you're ready and you've dumped all the negative junk onto a piece of paper, I want you to rip that piece of paper up and throw it away.

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You can recycle it if you want.

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Rip it up.

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Rip, rip, rip, rip, rip.

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That is a symbol of letting all that stuff out and then getting rid of it.

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Okay, so that's important on the negative side.

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But we want to keep thinking about what do I want to see when I look in the mirror?

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What do I want other people to see when they look at me?

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And this is not typically about size or weight.

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I said you could include it and you can include it.

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That's one aspect.

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But I don't know about you, but I don't look around at other people that I interact with in my life and wonder what size clothes they wear or how much they weigh.

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I don't think I've ever done that.

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I could see how maybe if you were at a Weight Watcher's meeting or something, you might do that.

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But otherwise, we're only doing it to ourselves.

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So it's not about that.

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Now, the next step after you think about a brainstorm of how do I want people to see me?

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What do I want to see about myself?

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The next brainstorm that we're gonna do is we're gonna figure out what is amazing about you.

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And I'm gonna make us do this a couple of times because it's really, really important.

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But here we go.

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What is amazing about you?

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What is your favorite feature?

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And to be honest with you, I have a fairly decent body image for myself after a lot of work, and I'll tell you a story about that in a minute.

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But this was still a little bit challenging.

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And what I came up with for me was my eyes.

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I have green eyes, and I think I think they're cool.

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I like my eyes and my hair, which is sometimes wild and crazy, but I like my curly hair.

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And then I came up with that.

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I actually do have a waist, maybe not as small as it used to be, but I do have a waist.

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So I guess in general, like my shape, I'm I'm happy enough about.

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And that wasn't the easiest list to create.

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So if it takes if it takes you a little bit of time, that's okay.

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I want you to find at least three things about yourself, about your body, that you really like, that you think are your great features and write it down.

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Write them down.

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And then I want you to start noticing those great features first when you look in the mirror and when you see a picture of yourself.

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I want you to notice.

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If you said your eyes, I want you to go right to your eyes.

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Are they open?

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Are they sparkling?

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Are they looking happy?

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Whatever it is, go right to them.

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Because what we tend to do, you know what I'm gonna say, I know you do, is we tend to go right to the features that we don't like.

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We go check how does our neck look?

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How does the chin look?

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How does the waist, the stomach look, how does the butt look, whatever it is, whatever your hot button issue is.

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We go right to that, right to that, especially when we look at pictures of ourselves.

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So I want you to have these three or more, if you've got more features that you really love about your body, then put more on the list.

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But I want you to have these top of mind because over time, and we're gonna be mixing this in the next couple of episodes in this mini-series as well.

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Over time, you need to teach your brain that your body is not the enemy, that your body is amazing.

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And if you've ever heard the verse from the Bible, or this is just a phrase, but anyway, fearfully and wonderfully made always comes to mind for me.

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Your body was made for you, exactly for you, for nobody else.

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And so if we have trained ourselves over the years, because of all the stuff we talked about in part one, all the stuff we heard and took in and made it mean something that maybe it didn't even mean, if we've trained ourselves over the years to dislike that body, to criticize that body all the time, that's not what we're meant to be doing.

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It's bringing us down.

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So I want you to think, how do I want to come across?

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How do I want other people to see me?

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I want you to think about adjectives, I want you to think about descriptors.

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If you want to, you can think about a goal weight, like I said, or goal size.

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And if that's really something that you're getting stuck on and you're frustrated about, I want you to ask yourself, why did I pick that size or that weight?

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Is it a real reason?

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Is that the healthiest way you can be?

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Or is it a reason that you think if you get there, then you'll be, you know, you'll look like such and such does in her pictures?

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Because that's not a real reason.

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So maybe it's more like being active and looking like you're active and having strong limbs and being able to do the push, pull, squat, twist, all those movements that we need to be able to do in midlife.

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You heard that on the podcast from one of my guests whose name is escaping me right now.

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Oh my goodness, Erica Shannon.

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So today, your goal is what do you really want related to your body?

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And how can we learn to love the parts of our body that we already like?

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Because just like glimmers, we need to train our brain to look for more good things.

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A glimmer means just that tiny moment of joy when you sip your coffee and it's perfect, or you look out the window and it's sunny, or you walk out the door and it's just a gorgeous day, or you look up in the sky and you see a cloud shaped like a cute animal.

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I don't know.

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I'm making these things up, but a moment of joy.

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And if we train our brain that those are everywhere and we just bask in them whenever we notice them, whenever we see them, then our brain starts to look for more.

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It's the same concept with body image.

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If you train your brain to notice first the parts of yourself that you are happy with or proud of or really like, then your brain's gonna keep looking for those more and more.

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And that pattern is power.

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Alright, keep going with your list, and I'll see you next time.