Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 407. Loving yourself, will make you more attractive About this episode We are bombarded with ideas about how we should look, behave, and be. But instead of trying to constantly strive for the societal ideal, we can cut through the noise another way - and that’s by cultivating self-love. The funny thing is, psychology actually shows us that the more confident and self-loving we are, the more attractive we become. It’s a win-win… if we can get there. Today, we're going to talk about how loving ourselves makes us more attractive.
We unpack:
• The power of the mind-body link and self-esteem
• Why plastic surgery might not make us happy
• The damaging physical effects of negative self-talk
• How simple behavioural changes affect how others see us
• Why cultivating self-love is the greatest gift we can give ourselves
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3:07 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology.
3:27 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. Today, we are talking about beauty. We're talking about attraction, not in the way you may think. Mainly, we are talking about the theory that your thoughts contribute as deeply to your appearance as objective physical features and characteristics. Is that true? Do your thoughts change your attractiveness? And how exactly does that happen? How does loving ourselves actually have a biological, physical impact? Can I begin in a slightly different way this week? I want to tell you guys about this quote, my favorite quote.
4:10 Jemma Sbeg? Ever, just ever, full stop. Um, I feel like I share a lot of quotes on this podcast. This one like takes the cake. And I feel like it's the reason I wanted to do this episode. Because I've been thinking about it so often over the years. And finally, I was like, there must be some science to this. Um, it's from Roald Dahl. He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, BFG. This quote came from the twits. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. Because those thoughts will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look beautiful. Since I was a kid, this quote has resonated with me. I was an ugly kid. Let's be real. I was an ugly kid. And as an adult, I started to realize, and as a teenager, I was like, okay, cards that I was dealt.
4:55 Jemma Sbeg? If I control my thoughts, I really can not just change my appearance to other people, but how I feel internally. And that will change how I act. There have been people that I have met who are objectively beautiful, who are stunning. Who have all the structural features of a very attractive person. But they have had such nasty thoughts towards others and towards themselves and towards the world. And you can almost see it reflected in their faces. Like, there is a cruelty that comes with thinking mean things about other people. In contrast, some of the most beautiful people I have ever met, they were probably maybe not ever modeled for like Prada or Vogue. You know, they may not be on the cover of magazines, but there is this kindness that shines out of them.
5:35 Jemma Sbeg? That means people are instantly attracted to them. People are drawn to them like a magnet. Why does this happen? Because I think that we've all experienced this. Somebody who is objectively beautiful. We are kind of like, we feel weird about, but somebody who is like, maybe not that, has that draw. Today, we are going to investigate that phenomena. And the deep scientific evidence as to how our thoughts shape the reality of our physicality. And why focusing on self-love and kindness will make you an enigmatic person. It will pull people in in any room. So without further ado, let's talk about how loving yourself will scientifically, physically, psychologically make you more attractive.
6:25 Jemma Sbeg? All right, let's leave no mystery to even, to even begin here. Let's just jump straight into it. Yes, it is true. The way you think will have a significant impact on your physical appearance. There is evidence of this, and I'm gonna, I just have to give you guys that conclusion, the answer to the question before the explanation. It's true, physical beauty isn't everything. Your thoughts and your mentality have a much larger slice of the pie than you may think. Aleah Crum, she is a psychology professor, director of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab. She has conducted extensive research on something that we call the mind-body link. The mind-body link is this bidirectional intimate communication between mental states,
7:10 Jemma Sbeg? between our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and our physical health and our physical form and reality. She basically says our minds are not passive observers. They do not simply perceive our reality as it is. Our minds change our reality, even on a biological level. There are so many instances where our mental beliefs affect our physical appearance. Or just not, not just our appearance, but our physical reality. For example, there was an NYU study published this year, like two months ago in February, that talks about how women who are scared of aging, of becoming less attractive, of their physical health declining,
7:51 Jemma Sbeg? actually age faster biologically when holding all else stable. These researchers, they basically concluded, these women, their thoughts about the state of their body were powerful enough to influence the actual biological age of their body. This also applies to attractiveness. The more positively you feel about yourself, the more powerfully people perceive you. And of course, we have heaps of evidence for this as well. How you think about your level of attractiveness. It influences, yes, firstly, how you present and your confidence levels, which have a emotional impact.
8:34 Jemma Sbeg? But there's evidence that it also impacts you on a more cellular level. Here is exactly how. Both our skin tissues and nervous system originate from the ectoderm, the outermost layer of cells on our body, that go on to form our nervous system, our skin, our hair, our nails, our sensory organs. The skin and the brain communicate through a network known as the skin-brain axis. A simple, like, very easy way of thinking about how our thoughts can influence our bodies is to consider this axis and is to consider how chronic stress, chronic negative thoughts, chronic hatred about ourselves,
9:19 Jemma Sbeg? heighten our stress response, heighten our nervous system response, heighten our, our central nervous system response, therefore disturbing all these other communications to the ectoderm, to our skin cells, to our, ah, to our organs. Many studies have shown that while short-term stress is important for survival, chronic stress, such as the stress that comes from hating yourself, the stress that, that comes from putting yourself down, can trigger a whole wide spectrum of just so many things that, again, I hate to say like attractive, unattractive, but that, ah, maybe aren't as healthy as, as our body could feel like and could look like. And it just goes to show the disturbances that self-hating thoughts can have on our appearance.
10:03 Jemma Sbeg? Likewise, you know, feelings of shame as well, feelings of anger towards ourselves, feelings of anxiety can also literally cause inflammation and can compromise your immunity in ways that show up physically. I should say there is such a focus online at the moment, I'm sure you guys have noticed this. Such a focus on like inflammation being this terrible, bad thing. Like, I'm so inflamed, I have so much inflammation. If nobody has told you this, inflammation is actually, like, some inflammation is good for you. It's a really good sign that your body is basically taking care of business. So you don't want to reduce all inflammation. But, you know, prolonged stress, anger, anxiety towards your, like, anxiety about your life, about your appearance, environmental stresses, pain amongst so many other things,
10:47 Jemma Sbeg? can cause acute or chronic inflammation, which is brutal for so many reasons. It can affect body composition, skin, hair, you know, which is important when we're talking about attraction. It also impacts mood and personality and health, which is much more important on a deeper level. If we work towards loving ourselves, if we work towards speaking kindly to ourselves, we give our brains and our nervous system the best chance at keeping us healthy. And that health is converted into physical attractiveness. It's so interesting to me that these days, there's like so many quick fixes for like beauty. Like everywhere you go, there are like advertisements for botox, lip fillers, surgery. Um, and that seems to be like the first avenue that some people target.
11:32 Jemma Sbeg? When you should be targeting this baseline first of like, how do I think about myself? Do I love myself? Do I care about myself? Some people may say this is just a placebo effect. It's not your thoughts that are changing your actual appearance. It's that your thoughts are changing your behaviors. Doesn't really matter, whatever the mechanism, like the effect is obvious. Especially when it comes to how others view us, which feels so shallow, but again, that's what the episode is about. There have been some really interesting theories recently, which say confidence specifically dominates objective attractiveness when it comes to other people's assessments of beauty. Let's look into that for a second. Let's look at the evidence.
12:17 Jemma Sbeg? Studies show that those who view themselves as attractive have higher romantic self-confidence and self-esteem. Which therefore influences how they behave in social and dating situations. And it really doesn't matter how objectively attractive they actually are. The subjective assessment of their attractiveness is what influences this above everything else. Having that kind of attractiveness changes everything from our body language to our ability or willingness to initiate conversation, to our openness to strangers, which can make someone appear more open and reliable and trustworthy. Because they are receptive, because they have this magnetic energy that says, come and talk to me, like. Let's come and interact with me.
13:03 Jemma Sbeg? This is called social contagion. It is a rapid, often unconscious spread of emotions, behaviours, beliefs through a group of people, through a social network because of mirror neurons, because of behaviour mimicking and emotional contagion as well on top of social contagion. It explains, we've talked about this recently, actually, when it comes to trends. It explains how trends form, why panic-driven behaviours happen, and it explains social perception and how your perception of yourself can travel to the people around you. This process, it's driven by automatic, built-in cognitive mechanisms rather than by conscious thought, but we can subconsciously influence that. We can subconsciously reprogram
13:47 Jemma Sbeg? how we feel about ourselves through the repetition of positive self-affirmation, through the repetition of practices that prioritise self-love. That feeds into confidence, that confidence is what impacts other people's assessment of us. One particularly famous study about this um asked to like three hundred young adult, three hundred around that, young adults to rate their self-perceived attractiveness as well as self-reported confidence in their appearance, romantic relationships and body esteem. The study found a strong correlation between having high self-perceived attractiveness, again, regardless of actual attractiveness,
14:32 Jemma Sbeg? high body esteem, high self-confidence with overall self-esteem and with overall romantic attraction to those people. Uh it's just, it's this weird thing.
14:45 Jemma Sbeg? People like confident people because it's easy to be confident around them. And it's easy to buy into what somebody's trying to sell you about themselves when they really believe it. A study from nineteen eighty-one found that this may actually come down to not just that, but down to emotional expressiveness. So people who display, uh as well, who are confident, display a lot of non-verbal cues for emotion. They're really able to infect the emotions and and the mood of other peoples in the room without saying anything, regardless of objective attractiveness. They're also able to appear more friendly, more likeable.
15:27 Jemma Sbeg? I think what we need to understand again, I've kind of briefly explained this mechanism, but why, right? Like, why is it so infectious? Why is confidence like the superpower? I'm gonna take a short break and then I'm gonna lay it all out for you guys. So stay with us.
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20:09 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, so again, how we think about ourselves impacts how people see us. That much we know why. I've given some explanations about like openness and about like people who feel good about themselves make others feel good. But part and the biggest part of the science behind why confidence is so infectious and why it makes people like us is that many of us seek out traits in a partner or in a friend that are difficult to observe directly. You know, we want somebody who is kind, who is competent, driven, liked by others and so on. And just meeting them for the first time or even a second time, like we have to make guesses. But someone being very confident when we meet them, that's a quality that we can measure. Like we can quickly be like, oh yeah, this person likes themselves.
20:52 Jemma Sbeg? And that acts as an indication of all these other worthy traits because part of us trust that people know themselves well. Or at least they know themselves better than us. Therefore, we subconsciously assume that their confidence or their lack thereof reflects their value as a partner or a friend based on an accurate self-assessment. Whether that is true or not, it's something that we believe. To test this again, there was another study in two thousand and fifteen. It looked at how people like viewed and perceived potential romantic partners who were overconfident in themselves and who had a bit too much to say about themselves. Were they going to be put off by that arrogance?
21:33 Jemma Sbeg? In the study, they specifically focused on a group of people who claimed to have knowledge of information that simply didn't exist. Um, people who were cocky, basically. The study had the overconfident people write up dating apps. And then they had the, a separate group of people, um, all opposite sex participants, read those dating profiles and rate the authors. Basically, do you think this person would be attractive?
22:07 Jemma Sbeg? The overconfident group, even though they didn't have pictures of them, even though they didn't have, you know, any visual indicators. A lot of these people were like, yeah, I think that this person would be attractive. I think that this person would be, yeah, would be beautiful. Um, because of how it impacted their perceptions. Why would somebody, you know, behave this way? They weren't beautiful. You know, why would they have all this confidence if they didn't have something to back it up? That's basically the formula or basically the mechanism that some researchers and psychologists use to explain why confidence is so alluring. Basically, because a confidence is a mental shortcut for assessing,
22:52 Jemma Sbeg? for assessing how well somebody knows themselves and believing that somebody knows that they are a good person and that they are an attractive person, they are a kind person, because otherwise, why would they feel this way? Obviously, it kind of doesn't account for arrogance, which is why sometimes, you know, we'll find somebody really attractive until we realise, oh wait, you really think that you're amazing? But the first, in terms of first impressions, it is very, very powerful. We can go even further with this and talk about how, talk about mirror neurons and talk about facial expressions. And how, basically as well, confidence is one thing. Having positive thoughts, loving yourself means that you are better able to be conscious of what other people are doing around you,
23:37 Jemma Sbeg? because you are not so critical of yourself. Essentially, you're better able to reciprocate other people's behaviour because you're not self-conscious. A University of Wisconsin study showed that people simulate the facial expressions of people around them. And in that, that creates emotional responsiveness in those people. Essentially, if you are less in your head, more in the present, you are more likely to reciprocate how other people are acting. And that creates a ripple effect of positive emotion in those around you. Or if you're the one who originated the smile as well, it, it signals. responsiveness. It signals that you are approachable and that you are ultimately attractive
24:21 Jemma Sbeg? because you've opened this emotional door for other people to enter. Basically, there is a connection there that says I'm engaged. I believe in myself. I believe in you. That makes people wanna, that makes people like you. Basically, to do a mini summary of all this, because I feel like I'm going, I'm, I'm going in circles. We like people who know themselves. We like people who think of themselves as worthwhile. We like those who are emotionally and socially reciprocal. All of those things we can change regardless of actual physical appearance. Because it comes down to charisma, to getting out of our own head and to emotional intelligence. That is really the power here. Being present, being confident, being calm.
25:05 Jemma Sbeg? So how does this compare to making physical changes to your appearance? Because, don't get me wrong, this mental reprogramming of like, I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am hot, I look great. It takes time, like, it takes a lot of time. And some people may prefer to just fix the insecurity that's really standing in their way. Normally, they can be like, I, I feel really great about everything else, but, you know, I don't really like my nose. I don't really like my boobs. I don't really like my cheeks. They can get those surgeries. Do interventions like that, that remove the initial insecurity, work long term? I'm not saying do they make somebody more attractive, because they probably do. And like, it's something that they really want and I'm not here to tell you what you can and can't do with your body.
25:46 Jemma Sbeg? There's enough of that in the world. You, you really can do whatever you want and I will support everybody's decision. But what I do think is important is like, when we are talking about the secret source to confidence and the secret source to being attractive, is it all physical? Does surgery remove the internal insecurity? There was a study in Noy of like fifteen hundred girls over, and women, I guess, because it was over a thirteen year period. And it measured appearance satisfaction, mental health, all that kind of thing. Um, at different points and then also how many of these girls and then women got surgery? So basically, time one, they were children. They were like, how insecure are you? Time two, how insecure are you and have you gotten surgery?
26:29 Jemma Sbeg? Five percent of them reported having cosmetic surgery at some point between those years. What's interesting is that those who reported higher levels of depression and anxiety and insecurity were more likely to get cosmetic surgery in the first place. Afterwards, though, their levels of anxiety, their levels of depression, um, especially around how they looked, did not decrease. It did not go away. Having cosmetic surgery didn't help alleviate the emotional wounds for them that for a lot of them, they said, had caused this pain, being bullied, being criticized by parents. Now, not all of them did this out of insecurity, I'm not saying that.
27:13 Jemma Sbeg? But if we are driven to surgery to fix insecurity and fix anxiety, it doesn't seem to be the fix that we think it is. Another study followed ninety eight women and two men for two years across the U S. And these patients answered questions about their satisfaction, like body satisfaction, body image, self-esteem, symptoms of depression as well before cosmetic surgery and then again afterwards, or between then and when they got the surgery and then a couple of years later. Each subject during the time of the study had at least one, five, uh, very popular procedures, so breast augmentations, rhinoplasties, B P Ls, that sort of thing.
27:56 Jemma Sbeg? The patients reported being satisfied with the outcome of their plastic surgery. They didn't report any increase in happiness, though, whatsoever. For those who did, it was very minor. It was a temporary boost. Basically, I think these studies are asking us to consider our desires for cosmetic procedures and ask ourselves, if it's confidence and attractiveness I'm after, will this actually solve my problem if I don't work on my internal sense of self-love? Or will my mind just keep searching for what's wrong next? Again, I'm gonna say this, there's no judgment in this. I've considered cosmetic procedures myself. I will probably get one at some stage. Maybe I can't say, but I I probably think I will. If it's my friends have cosmetic surgeries, I think they look fantastic and I think it was the right
28:42 Jemma Sbeg? decision for them. Um, it's just about addressing the root cause. Because in contrast, a study that looked at over seven hundred patients with body dysmorphia. Were treated with cognitive behavioural therapy. Found that every single, single one of them responded well to that treatment. And every single one of them had an improved quality of life, felt better about themselves, felt long lasting changes, not just to their wellbeing, but to things like their confidence levels as well. That was the comparison, surgery versus doing the deep inner work, maybe doing both at the same time would be ridiculously powerful. What these studies are really saying is that there are a few layers to attractiveness, just to summarize.
29:25 Jemma Sbeg? There is an internal layer, there is an external layer. Being attractive is not just about performing for others or fitting within a very narrow idea of what beautiful looks like, it is also about self-acceptance. That final ingredient, you can do everything you want to your body, that final ingredient brings a magnetism that is deeply powerful and cannot be replicated. And yes, like surgeries, makeup, clothes, like contribute to that. But you also have to rewire the ways that society has taught you to hate yourself. That is a superpower. When you realize like, hating myself has never made my life better, has never, and never got me out of a problem,
30:06 Jemma Sbeg? has never made me more attractive and has never attracted the love I want to me. It is a magic spell. That's what my aunt used to always say, like, put on your magic spell, like, put on your self-love spell. If you cast that on yourself, it, it's intoxicating. When people see somebody that is truly in love with themselves and thinks they're great, that person is the most beautiful person you've ever met. Think about it, like, what's the most beautiful person you've ever seen? Sure, they were beautiful, there was something else though, wasn't there? Like, you remember the feeling of, of being around them. You remember the feeling of like, seeing how they walked, seeing how they spoke, seeing how they acted. Like, that was the ingredient that really, like, made the pie.
30:48 Jemma Sbeg? With that in mind, let's get to the advice giving part of this episode. Let's talk about four ways to rewire your self-perception. And therefore, your physical appearance, your beauty, using your thoughts. First up, and this is one of the most powerful mechanisms for so many things. Develop a visualization ritual that transports you into a confident state. By conjuring like an internal vision of how you want to be perceived. Make it magical, make it wonderful. I'm going to give you some examples, this is going to explain this better. The best one out there is the golden orb exercise. I've spoken about this before, but if you want to feel more confident. Imagine a golden, bright orb sitting right in your heart.
31:33 Jemma Sbeg? Emanating from your chest and with each breath. It goes a few inches wider, a few inches wider. Until it starts to engulf people, bring people into the fold. Make them feel just pulled towards you. Some people also think about it like a force field, as like a magnet. Like this is your secret armor, that mental visualization of like, I'm go. I'm going to project my mind outwards to bring people inwards. That brings a glow, that makes people attracted to you because of how you are thinking. About yourself in the context of them. These visualization rituals leverage something that we call embodied cognition. So when you imagine, when you visualize energy radiating from your body or.
32:18 Jemma Sbeg? Protecting you like an armor, your brain treats that as the truth. That filters into your conscious thoughts, that filters into your deliberate behavior. Meaning you shift your posture, meaning you shift your breathing. Meaning that your attention really begins to be more finely tuned. Meaning you pay attention to things about yourself that you like. It also just on a physical level, like changes muscle tension, changes heart rate. This all feeds back into the emotional experience. Of making you feel more powerful, therefore changing how you physically present as powerful and confident. Another thing I've done in the past is that before I've walked into a date. Before I've walked into a room, a meeting, a party. I give myself three compliments.
33:03 Jemma Sbeg? I am smart. I have great hair, I don't know, I have great eyes, things like that. I I I force myself to give myself those compliments and then walk thin. Because that's grounding, like that is a po- a very powerful form of cognitive priming. You enter a room now looking for evidence that people are responding to you in a positive way. Because you have primed your mind to be receiving of that. You have primed your mind to feel beautiful. I generally find that just reminding myself of my positive qualities also becomes quite a self fulfilling prophecy. I can go into a situation reminded of my good sense of humor, reminded of my ability to listen.
33:45 Jemma Sbeg? And it gives me a little mental nudge to be more present, to be like, to be trusting of this unconscious or subconscious part of me that's gonna take over. And mean that I will be okay, because in the past I've always been okay. And even if I haven't, I ha- I now have new skills. Next, it can be useful to turn your self care routine into a kind of ritual or ceremony. That's less on fixating about how the world thinks you look or how you present. And more about spending time with yourself, having a quiet moment whilst you're doing a face mask, whilst you're brushing your teeth, whilst you're doing, brushing your hair, whatever. This is practices of self love with each movement. Think of that action as as a token of appreciation, as a form of love. Imagine you are brushing your hair.
34:29 Jemma Sbeg? It's the hair of your childhood self, imagine it's little you, sitting in front of you and you're brushing your hair out of love. Imagine cooking a nourishing meal for the most gentlest parts of yourself. Making your bed nice and comfy or neat as a deep act of devotion to yourself. You are worthy of being treated nicely, you are worthy of being adored, you are a creature of softness and beauty, treat yourself as such. Literally act towards yourself with the most purest form of endearment and kindness and love and devotion and loyalty. So that your brain begins to internalize, we are worthy of this behavior. We are worthy of being treated this way because we are a beautiful, magical, wonderful person.
35:13 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, I have a couple of final tips, we're gonna take one more short break before we get into them, stay with us.
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35:54 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on, and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
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39:14 Jemma Sbeg? And this product is perfect for that. I also find that Moisture Surge is a great lightweight base. If you like something under your makeup, it makes your skin look so plump and soft, especially first thing in the morning when it's maybe not looking that way. Basically, I think it feels exactly like how you want a moisturizer to feel. Fresh, lightweight, and deeply hydrating. Try Clinique Moisture Surge One Hundred Hour today at clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge.
39:45 Jemma Sbeg? Let's talk about the role of exercise in making you more attractive. And not in the way you think, not in like the excessive cardio way, in the mental way. Exercise and movement make you more attractive. Because of the appreciation they create for our bodies. And the neutrality and the gratitude we develop towards our physical form and what it is capable of. Instead of what it could do better and how it could look better and how it fails us in, in terms of beauty. If you cannot love your body as it is, as you want it to be. At least respect it for what it allows you to see, enjoy, witness, move through.
40:28 Jemma Sbeg? Movement and exercise connects you with that deeper appreciation. That translates into good habits, translates into confidence, translates into health. This doesn't have to be exercise. This could be something you do with your hands, like pottery, something you do with your legs, hiking, carrying heavy grocery bags. Climbing, life drawing, being a nude model, like something more embodied, like dancing. Anything at all that challenges the idea that your body only exists to carry around your brain. Or to be looked at or to be critiqued is so important. And having a healthy relationship with movement is something that really fuels your soul, makes you feel alive.
41:13 Jemma Sbeg? Brings energy back into your body is incredibly biologically powerful as well as psychologically powerful. Even just connecting with your body on a sensory level. Disconnecting from it is something that needs to be witnessed and something that needs to be experienced. Is just so powerful because you really, yeah, it's that gratitude thing, but you stop. Being in this mindset of feeling constantly monitored. And again, I think I've really now this a few times, now this time, but I'm gonna do it a more time, like. When you are obsessed with your physical appearance, when you are obsessed with how you look, you are immediately less attractive because you are distracted, right?
41:57 Jemma Sbeg? You are distracted because you are constantly monitoring how other people are seeing you. You're not connecting with them, you're not making eye contact, you're not thinking or you're not interested or interesting. Like you are just internalized, like you are just, you're shutting down into like really rapid and harsh self-assessment. In contrast, like genuinely being like my form is just the vessel through which I live my life. It is just how I do things and how I go about experiencing things. That is what builds attractiveness because you are able to be more present and therefore more confident and more engaged with other people.
42:39 Jemma Sbeg? Sorry to go on a rant with that, but finally, my final thing, instead of focusing on how to look smacks, what needs to be tweaked, what needs to be changed, what weight needs to be gained or lost. Like similar to what I just said, work on making yourself more interesting. More interesting to yourself, more interested in others. This is the most alluring quality you can have. Interesting people are fascinating. And people who show a deep desire to know others and who make eye contact and who remember people's names and remember the trips they just went on and remember the fun facts that they told them, who are interested in their stories, those people have game. Like people wanna be around people like that.
43:21 Jemma Sbeg? How many times have you met someone who you didn't immediately think was attractive? Then you like saw them talk about something they really cared about. And or you saw them like make everybody laugh and you were like, oh my god, like, hey, okay, like hello, like that person is, that person looks and feels good. If you wanna be more attractive, have something you care about. Have something you can rant about, have a cause that you dedicate time to. The most attractive thing somebody can be is interested and interesting. Like have the hobby, have some, have a deep dive, have a Wikipedia page you know everything about. Like, it's a grounding part of your identity.
44:02 Jemma Sbeg? What it really is, is that people look at you and they're like, oh, they know themselves so well, they cannot be disturbed by anything I have to say. Like, that that person isn't even worth trying to make feel bad. They know themselves. I also think like being a great conversationalist also comes into this as well. People we've seen love people who reciprocate. They also love people who make them feel seen. Like, it's, it goes beyond confident. If you can't be confident, be intrigued. Leave pauses in conversation. Remember that every great conversationalist you have met has learnt that skill. It is a skill. It is a skill of nonverbal communication. It is a skill of appreciating silence.
44:42 Jemma Sbeg? It is a skill of the two to one question ratio of never forgetting a name, never forgetting a detail. Concentrating on one person at a time. If you cannot be like objectively attractive, be confident. If you cannot be confident, be a great conversationalist. There is a science to having great conversations. There's a system, I should say. And you can then learn, you can learn to embody that. You can learn to engage and talk to anybody in any single room. And that immediately, I think, makes you more beautiful and and more of a pure, enlightened, fabulous person to be around. Because you make people feel human and feel seen, which is all we ever really want. Finally, finally, I know I said finally like six times now, but definitely finally. I just need you to remember.
45:28 Jemma Sbeg? As much as we think that beauty is objective. There is a large, like a large part of it is subjective. Just because you look different from the current beauty standard, just because you will never have that nose, never have that physique, never have whatever that person has, those muscles. Doesn't mean that like you are not a beautiful person. I really do think the world is moving towards uniqueness, rather than like straight up and down cookie cutter beauty. Like. That is the biggest asset you have, that you are a little bit different, that you are somebody who is enigmatic in that they know themselves. Like, that is one of the longest lasting gifts you can give yourself.
46:13 Jemma Sbeg? To love yourself so deeply that it becomes a feature of how people see you. And it becomes, and it is represented physically in like the sun that shines out of your face. It is represented physically in how your skin feels, how your hair looks, how your nervous system is regulated. The more you tend to your inner life, the bigger the world around you becomes. And it's not just about romantic interests, it's not just about whether people find you attractive, it's about the spaces that you put yourself in, it's about the opportunities and luck that come your way. Again, we can worry as much, we can worry till the cows come home about whether that
46:56 Jemma Sbeg? person finds us hot, about whether, you know, we're ever gonna be that size, look that way. And at the end of the day, it's important, but it really doesn't matter all that much. Because are you having fun? Are you enjoying yourself? Do you feel lucky to be alive? Do you really engage? Are you interested and interesting to other people? That's gonna get you so much further than just having good looks. Honestly, if the, if the evidence hasn't proven it enough, hopefully you can, you get evidence through experience and you see how life changing that is, like how life changing it is to reprogram yourself out of self hatred and into self love. So, thank you for listening to this episode. I know I went on a lot of little rants.
47:40 Jemma Sbeg? I know that I covered so many things. So if you're still here, thank you for being a loyal listener. Leave a little emoji down below. What's our emoji gonna be of the day? Oh, surely a golden orb, surely a little sun emoji, surely a little star emoji to represent our golden orb exercise. Make sure that you, if you are listening, have perhaps checked us out on Netflix. Yes, we are on Netflix now. We have so many episodes over there if you are in the mood to catch up on a little bit of video podcasting. You can also follow us on Instagram. Make sure you are following wherever you are listening right now so you get new episodes directly to your feed. You guys know the deal, it's all in the description.
48:23 Jemma Sbeg? There's so many links down there at this stage that you could get lost, but yeah, go and check it out. And thank you as always to our researcher Lucy Davidson for her help and contributions and research. Uh, this episode, until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.
48:48 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
49:25 Jemma Sbeg? I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information driven person and I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable, personalized insights that have made me more intentional
50:11 Jemma Sbeg? and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop. Hi, this is Jemma Sbeg. Taking care of yourself doesn't have to mean completely changing your routine. Naturewise Vitamin D3 is an easy way to support immune, bone, and muscle health every single day. And because quality matters, Naturewise has one of the first NSF certified Vitamin D3 currently on the market.
50:53 Jemma Sbeg? Plus, it's non-GMO, gluten-free, and third-party tested. Visit naturewise.com to explore their Vitamin D3 options and find the one that's right for you. Naturewise.com.
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