How to Overcome Negative Comparisons and Love the Skin You’re In
13m
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Realiteen Talks
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It may feel impossible to not compare yourself, particularly regarding body image, to others, from celebrities touted in the media to people who are a part of your everyday life.
However, these comparisons can have a negative effect on your self-esteem, placing unrealistic and damaging expectations on you that can affect your self-worth.
On this episode of FranklinCovey Education’s Realiteen Talks, host and High School Practice Leader Gary McGuey was joined by a panel of teenagers to explore how to break the cycle of unhealthy comparisons and learn to love yourself for who you are.
Comparisons can also be drawn between your current self and the person you want to become, such as when you’ve set a goal to lose weight, be more fit or something else entirely. While pushing yourself and setting goals can help you progress, that growth can only occur with a healthy attitude toward your journey.
The panelists offered some tips for managing comparisons, body image and self-esteem.
Recognizing your uniqueness and the beauty of being a singular individual, though difficult, can help put you in a better headspace, as can remembering that everyone has a unique journey that no one else can truly see and working to set realistic, achievable standards for yourself that make you happy.
The episode How to Overcome Negative Comparisons and Love the Skin You’re In from the podcast Realiteen Talks has a duration of
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The Relationship between Courage and Growth in Tackling Unconscious Bias
In the first two Realiteen Talks conversations about unconscious bias, FranklinCovey Education High School Practice Leader Gary McGuey and a panel of teenage guests have tackled how to identify your own biases – after all, if you have a brain you have bias – and how to be open enough to be willing to overcome them.
In this third installment, the answer to true growth was revealed – courage.
In order to confront bias and experience genuine growth, you have to have the courage to be uncomfortable. No one likes to look in the mirror and see things they wish they could change, but the irony is that those things can’t be changed unless you’re brave enough to take them on.
Some would argue that confronting bias just leads to more conflict. While that misconception can appear true, especially in the early stages of such a confrontation, it’s certainly not true over the long run.
“If you are confronting bias with respect to the people you’re talking to, with tact, with the correct information and with different viewpoints, it can be effective,” one panelist said. “It can create a good response. It can create a safe space for everyone to feel like they’re represented [and that] their viewpoint is being heard.”
Watch the full episode for more thoughts on how to meet this final battle with unconscious bias head on.
How Can You Move Past Unconscious Bias and Cultivate Connections?
As we discussed in the first episode of Realiteen Talks’ series on unconscious bias, every human being on the planet experiences it – and coming to terms with that fact is key to identifying your own unconscious biases.
Now, though, more questions remain. Once you’ve identified an unconscious bias in yourself or others, how can you work through it and begin to cultivate connections with genuine openness?
That was the subject of this episode, where host and FranklinCovey High School Practice Leader Gary McGuey was once again joined by a panel of teenage guests ready to deliver their firsthand insight.
It all begins, one panelist said, with a commitment to exploring outside your comfort zone. The process, by its very nature, will therefore be uncomfortable, but it’s that discomfort that lets you know you’re being exposed to things that will help you grow.
“Explore maybe those things you don’t really see as big biases,” she said. “Just exploring outside of yourself [is key].”
It’s also critical to work alongside one another to grow together, as unconscious biases are created and reinforced by your own ways of thinking. Without new information and an openness to others’ opinions, particularly those that contradict your own, you can only change your own thinking to a certain extent.