 Question is from who's saying, how and what defines a person's self image and how do you learn to not identify your body image as your self image? Well, that's a bit of a deep, a deep, you know, years ago I heard a saying and I used it as a trainer because it was very powerful and that was to not confuse your body image with your self image. So in other words, you could be objective about your body, you could look in the mirror and say, you know, right now my body is reflecting my poor lifestyle. Right now my body's reflecting my bad eating habits, my body's reflecting the fact that I'm not active, but that doesn't define who I am. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It just means that there's certain things that I haven't done and now you can see it on my body. And it's very different from somebody looking in the mirror saying to themselves, wow, I'm overweight, I'm out of shape, what an idiot I am, what a terrible person I am, I don't deserve respect, I need to punish myself. Very, very different. Your self image is how you feel about yourself and how you feel yourself on the whole, you know? And I like to tell people to look deeper, you know? Okay, fine, you're out of shape. And you know, this is the thing, by the way, some people go too far in one direction. They completely, they lie about the body image part. No, no, no, you look fine. Say you look awesome. Say you love the way you look. Like you're denying people truth a little bit there. It's okay to say, yeah, I'm overweight, yeah, I don't look good. You are not fat, but your body has fat. Right, right. And that's real feedback. Right, exactly. And that's a result of a lack of movement and overconsumption, and that's just purely science. But that doesn't identify who you are as a person. You can still be amazing, brilliant, smart, beautiful, all these great attributes. And at the same time, still be allowing yourself to have an out of balance, energy balance, right? Where you are consuming more than you're expending and there's nothing wrong with that. And identifying and understanding that is a very important exercise that, you know? And I think that a lot of times, I think I purposely challenge my own body to do that, to allow it to get skinny a little bit, to put on a little bit of body fat to be jacked, to go in and out, and then to always try and remain consistent with who I am as a person. And just because other people may be saying things to me, like, oh, what happened to all your muscle? Or, oh, what's that? I don't allow any of that stuff to faze me. I know who I am. I know that I can control that and do that anytime I want. I don't identify with being this muscular guy or not muscular guy. You just gotta be okay with that because it's not who you are. But it is a reflection of what I am doing or not doing to build muscle or burn body fat. And that's the honesty part. Like it's okay to be honest about that. And, you know, here's the challenge. If you identify with your body that strongly where it becomes your self-image, you're gonna be screwed no matter what because first off, if you're lucky, you get to live till old age and your body's gonna change. There's nothing you could do about it. So if your body image becomes your self-image, you can look at a lot of celebrities. A lot of celebrities are like this, right? They get famous because they're beautiful. Maybe they're sex symbols. What a difficult position to be in because it's very easy to self-identify with your body when your body's what gives you all these accolades and love and all this attention. But here you are now turning 50, 60. Oh my gosh, what do I do? Tons of plastic surgery, tons of treatments, but my body's gonna get older. There's nothing I can do about it. What a terrible position to be in. That's why you don't want to self-identify so strongly with all these things that can change. Who you are is something far deeper. It's inside. Some people would say it's the consciousness observing the world around you. That's what Eckhart Tolle would say. Religious people would say it's the spirit inside of you. There's a reason why religious practices and philosophers identify these things as such. It's because it is a very, it's a better way to live. Otherwise you're gonna find yourself at odds with yourself. You're gonna be find yourself battling yourself on a constant basis. So you wanna be able to talk about yourself in that way and say to yourself, there's a difference between looking in the mirror and saying, I look like crap, I hate myself. And I look like crap, I need to start taking care of myself. Very, very different mentality. It's really hard because you get a lot of feedback from other people and then you start really owning that feedback and that becomes like in your mind is like, this is how everybody perceives me. So this is obviously who I am as a person. I think it's just, it's tough, but you gotta go deeper than that. Like so you're mentioning spiritual things. You're mentioning things of, really diving into like true meaning and purpose that you can find elsewhere outside of your body. And like, whether that's like being involved more, like find a community thing where you can give back or you could like immerse yourself amongst other people and like really think more outside of yourself. I think you're internalized, like a lot of times I've found with clients that get really obsessed with their body. It's like, that is everything. Like I'm like, okay, what else are you doing? Like what other things do you have going on in your life? Like there's not a lot. It's like, it's very much like self-centered, you know, issues-wise. And it's hard to break out of that because it's like this, you keep feeding it all the time. Well, I also think this is a result of the over-glorification of these extreme examples of bodies too, right? Like we, even like my, like I'm in some of the worst, you know, physical shape, if you were to compare like the aesthetics of my body today than I was in the last five years, but I'm extremely healthy. I mean, I don't have a higher body fat percentage than probably 15% right now. I'm strong. I'm mobile. I have good relationships. I have a good relationship with exercise in the gym. I'm in there about three times a week right now. I'm in a very health, but if you were to look at my body and it took a picture of me naked next to me naked five years ago in the peak of me bodybuilding. Oh my God, I look so deconditioned and out of shape and unhealthy. It's like, no, I'm not. In fact, there's a good chance, especially if you count the anabolics and the things that I was doing and the stress levels that I had back then that I actually may even technically be healthier today than I was then, but because we've over glorified this extreme version of, you know, aesthetics, we start to identify so closely to, you know, oh, what you've looked like at your peak or what these people that we follow on social media look like and think like, oh my God, and you start to identify with that when it's like, no, like learn to kind of detach from that and really be honest with yourself. Like if we do think about the other things in your life, like balance and family and relationships and mobility and overall strength and energy and sleep, like if all of those things are in check really well and your body fat percentage is three or 5% north or south of what it was before, like that shit doesn't even matter that much. And it's what everybody else is judging and thinking about. And also consider this, every second you have an opportunity to be someone different. Okay, so what I mean by that is, you know, let's say you made some really bad decisions in the past. Maybe you even were a bad person. You hurt somebody, you stole, you broke some laws, whatever. That's who you were, right? You can always be someone else this second. So remind yourself of that. So even if you have a bad past because, you know, we know ourselves better than anybody else, we know all of our deep dark secrets and all the terrible things we may think or whatever and all of us have that issue, that's who you were, you can be someone else today. And that is an empowering thought. It's also a true thought and it can help you separate yourself from maybe the negative self-image that you had even just 10 minutes ago.