At our last quarterly client event, I stood up in front of the group and asked them to guess my bra size.
Bit weird?
Yeah.
But I like being a bit weird because it helps to make things memorable. (Or should that be mammerable?)
I even awarded the winner with a bar of chocolate!
(I mean, what better reason do you need to come to our events than that? Tony Robbins got nuttin on me…)
Anyway, you might be curious as to why I was talking about my breasticles. I even went so far as to tell the group that I’m extremely happy with them, even though they are below the average cup-size for the UK.
Now, I wasn’t talking randomly about my boobs before going on to something completely different, although in hindsight that would have been quite funny if I’d simply announced I love my boobs and then gone on to talk about time-management. I wonder if anyone would have questioned that?
Anyway, I did have an important related point or two to make.
I recounted the story of when I was in my mid-thirties and felt the urge to have a boob job.
I had in my head that if I could get them pumped up a bit, then I’d feel happier and more confident. I’d permanently feel like Pamela Anderson running along a beach in a red swimsuit.
I remember how the consultant got me to put on different bras filled with the weird gloopy baggies, and how I looked at myself in the mirror awkwardly.
The first ones he tried on me felt enormous.
He said they would give me a wonderful hourglass shape, and all I remember thinking was, “Are you saying I have a fat arse?”
My self-talk was really bad.
I had lots of problems with the way I looked. I constantly compared myself to pictures in magazines.
I just wasn’t satisfied with my perfectly healthy body.
When we eventually agreed upon the size of goo-bags he would stitch into my chest, he asked me some standard questions about my general health.
“Are you currently on medication?”
“Yes. I’m on antidepressants”
“Ah. OK” he said, “Well, can I suggest that you delay your decision to have surgery until you feel as if you are fully out of your mental health problems? You might feel differently about your body once you’re out of depression.”
“Oh…er…OK” I said, slightly disappointed that my shot at feeling like Pammy had been taken away from me, but I realised he was literally doing himself out of a few thousand pounds by turning me away, and he wouldn’t have done that unless there was a very good reason.
I’m so, so grateful for his ethical approach, and I was very lucky to have had my consultation with him, not least because that was around the time when many surgeons were inadvertently using toxic substances in implants that caused a healthcare scandal a few years later.
And he was totally right about me changing my mind about having surgery when I was over my depression. I’m not saying it would be the same for everyone, and I’m not demonising plastic surgery, but he totally had the measure of me in that consultation.
Once I’d sorted out the problem of negative self-talk and learned to appreciate the good things in my life more, I lost the need to find a magic bullet to make myself feel better.
I’ll tell you more about the interesting findings of a former plastic surgeon that sparked my idea to chat titties in tomorrow’s email.
In the meantime, why not spend a moment considering if you’re looking for magic bullets right now.
It might not be as drastic as plastic surgery, but you might be thinking things like “If I had such-and such” or “If only X would change…” then you’d feel better.
It’s possible that nothing needs to change at all - you might simply need to think of yourself in a more positive way and those needs will disappear.