feel your best and fall in love with your summer style
If you’re like me, you have a love/hate relationship with summer. You look forward to the fun and sun, but once the heat really rolls in you remember how miserable it can be. You envision a carefree, relaxed schedule only to realize it’s more chaotic with the schedule changes. And you look forward to shaking off the heavy clothes and shoes of the colder months until you see how much skin is suddenly showing.
In the colder months you wear a lot more clothing and feel somewhat shielded, but when the temperatures soar and your clothes get a lot smaller, it’s easy to feel, quite literally, exposed. Vulnerable. Naked. Not only is there less fabric covering you, but it’s thinner, sheerer, clingier, and much more revealing, and that can really shake your confidence.
It doesn’t have to be that way! With some simple changes you can strut your summer stuff confidently.
This article and the video below are taken from the Stunning Style Weekly Style Snack! Join us Wednesdays at 1pm ET on the Stunning Style Facebook page or the FREE Capsule Wardrobes for Classic Style Facebook Group.
Focus on Your Best Assets
As women we’ve been trained to tear ourselves down, focus on our flaws, that it’s rude to like anything about yourself, and confidence is mortal sin.
It’s time for that to change! What are your best assets? Don’t say you don’t have any, because you do. We all do. Is it your beautiful eyes? Fabulous legs? Graceful hands? Lovely shoulders? A warm smile? Fantastic skin?
What you focus on becomes your reality. Focusing on your best parts will not only make make feel more confident, that confidence will carry over into how you carry yourself, speak, move, take care of yourself, and more.
I would love for you to share one thing you love about yourself in the comments below, it’s time to normalize complimenting our own best features!
Know Your Body Shape
Knowing your body shape can help you see your best assets. When you know your best assets, you know where to focus the spotlight with your outfits, the same way the lighting crew does in a stage production. They use the spotlight to draw the audience’s attention to where they want them to look, whether they don’t want us to miss the important action, to highlight a soloist, or to distract us from a set change. You can do the same with your outfits once you know your body shape.
Learning about my body shape has helped me see where I need to adjust my expectations, what I can change, and what I can let go of. If you’re not sure how to find yours, I have a free downloadable worksheet to help you out!
Stop Comparing Yourself
If you hear nothing else I say today, I want you to hear this. Your body it perfect and beautiful just the way it is. We’ve been duped by the media and retailers to believe there is only one type of beautiful out there, and no one really meets those standards, including the models and celebrities who are held up as our beacons of inspiration.
The images we see online and in magazines are heavily photoshopped or cropped to only show the part of the body they are idolizing. Not only that, but most of them have had extensive plastic surgery, it’s their full-time job to look amazing, and they still get photoshopped. I got my own reality check about this a couple of decades ago.
A professional dancer glide past me at a competition wearing a tiny costume and looking flawless. She was perfect in every way. I exclaimed aloud to the man next to me as I watched her, “Wow! She looks amazing! At 42 she’s a goddess and looks way better than I do at 22,”
The man next to me said, “And you could look that amazing too if you had her personal trainer, workout program, personal chef, stylist, esthetician, personal assistant, and dedicated hours a day to working out and training.”
Genetics play a role, but he made a very good point. She dedicated a lot of money and time to looking like that; it was a full-time job. I really appreciated him pointing it out to me, because I’m just as guilty as anyone of comparing myself to others, and I’m never going to have the time, energy, or desire to dedicate to that level of effort. Comparing myself to someone who does is unfair.
Adjust Your Expectations
I’m a firm believer in growth and development, hard work, and setting goals, but it’s essential to know what you can and can’t change.
Your body shape is based on a few things: habits, circumstances, and genetics. The first one you can change, the second one is sometimes changeable, but genetics related to your body shape are set in stone. Can I set goals to help my body be as fit and healthy as possible? Yes! Can that help me look and feel my best! Without a doubt! Can I diet and exercise my way to a different body shape? Not at all.
For example, I have a very short torso, and my rib bone and hip bone are less than an inch apart. I’m never going to have a whittled waist – you can’t whittle bone! I will always have a straight waist. Mentally flogging myself won’t change that and comparing my body to that of a bikini model, who probably has between six and eight inches between those bones, is pointless.
I very clearly remember the day I learned this, and I felt so much relief that I could let that go and accept that part of my body the way it is.
Learn to Dress Your Body Shape
Once you know your body shape and where to direct the spotlight. Learning to dress your body shape teaches you to direct the spotlight so you look and feel your best in every outfit. You also learn that is a particular style of clothing doesn’t make you look your best, it’s not you, it’s the clothes!
Different types of clothing are made to fit different tops of bodies, and when you try to wear something that wasn’t made for your body shape, it’s easy to assume something is wrong with you, but there’s not!
Imagine you had a sailboat, and you bought a boat cover for a speed boat. Would you curse the sailboat as the cover dangled from the mast? No! You would buy a cover to fit the shape and size of the boat you own! It’s the same with your clothes. Learning which styles of clothes are made for your body shape is a game-changer!
Not only have I learned which clothes fit my body shape best, I’ve also learned what clothes I can wear to change how my body looks. With the right items, I can make it look like I have a waist!
In the summer it can be even more essential to know which clothes are perfect for you and which ones aren’t so you can look and feel your best, and I have a post for each body shape to help you learn how you can start directing the spotlight.
Read about the Body Shapes
1 thought on “How to Feel More Confident in Summer Outfits”
I’ve lived in Jax, FL for 3 decades and STILL don’t have a comfy summer wardrobe. Your color choices resonate with me (Type 4, perhaps). I am 5’4″, 111 lbs and enjoy a rectangular body (boy shape, as I’ve always thought). Thanks for sharing your wisdom. I’m much more about COMFORT than “style”. Positive attribute- lean and fit. I have nice legs too (except for the garden scrapes- LOL), yet feel like I should wear longer dresses/ shorts/ etc. as I am now 61 years old. 😉