I follow an educator named Vinny Welsby, aka The Fierce Fatty. I love their content, and as I was scrolling through some of their posts, I saw a term they coined: Constant Learner Mode. It's a mode I've been stuck in before and couldn't quite explain why. When I started my body love education, I knew logically my body was good. Fat doesn't make me bad. Stretchmarks don't make me bad. Cellulite is morally neutral, and the acne, bumps and scars don't matter. Why, then, couldn't I love my body? I still get stuck in weeks now where I look at my body and think "I don't like this! Why can't I be ok with this body right now?" Well, it's because I'm spending my time learning rather than doing.
Constant Learner Mode happens when we intake all we can about self love, body confidence and self care. We listen to podcasts. We follow body positive content creators. We read blog posts just like this one! We learn so much we're practically experts. However, we aren't practicing anything we've learned.
Think of it like this: you read books about riding a bike, you listen to podcasts about biking and you even watched a documentary or two about the Tour de France. When a bike is put in front of you, do you know how to ride it? No. It's something that you need to do. You're probably a lot more prepared than someone who hasn't done any research, but you really can't know how to ride a bike until you do it. You know where the pedals and breaks are. You know how to shift gears. You've got your helmet, but until you get on that bike, you can't say you know how to ride it. Ok, so now you're going to ride a bike. Yay! Would you go and sign up for a 10 mile bike race right away? Are you taking your bike into the mountains to zoom around? No way! You need to practice first. If you jumped into the hardest parts of biking, you're setting yourself up for failure. If you think riding a bike is hard and then you try to bike down a mountain on your first go, you're fulfilling your own fears. You'd never ride a bike again.
Body love is the same way. This is something you need to practice, and you can't jump into the hardest parts right away. If on Day 1 you decide you're going to start working on the relationship you have with your body and then on Day 2, you buy the tiniest bikini you can find and go to the beach, do you think that would be a successful outing? Probably not. Baby steps are important. Trying new things in a safe space is helpful. Creating a plan to take you from step one to step two and then on and on is so beneficial! Like any skill you want to be good at, you need to start small and practice!
That's one of the reasons I love boudoir. My sessions are body love practice. Here's your chance to take everything you've learned and put it to good use. Should boudoir be the very first thing you do when you start your self love journey? I'd say no, but could it be a step along the way. Yeah! It should be! This is a celebration of all the learning you've done! You can't be in Constant Learner Mode forever. It's time to do something. It's time to book a boudoir session. It's time to love yourself.
