Have you given into the temptation of staying in your sweat pants or PJ’s the whole day? Well in today’s episode I want to talk to you about the benefits of getting dressed and why we should do it even if we have nowhere to go.
The psychology behind getting dressed
What is the psychology behind getting dressed in the mornings? We’ll take a look at that now and then you want to make sure that you watch until the end, I’ve put together four looks to show you.
A lot of times when we experience great upset or stress in our lives one of the first things to go is self-care, and it’s actually quite ironic to think that we neglect ourselves so easily when that is actually the most important thing that we need to do in times like these. I definitely think that getting dressed, maybe putting on some makeup and some jewelry is part of a good self-care routine and I know how easy it is to let that slip. When I was fresh out of school I spent a year overseas working as an au pair and in the first few weeks, I was so homesick that I neglected myself terribly. My personal hygiene went out the window, I ended up wearing the uniform that they provided me with every single day even though I didn’t have to.
I couldn’t sleep well, I didn’t eat well and I really went into a spiral of depression, I had to work hard to get myself out of there.
I know firsthand how easy it is to just let ourselves go.
This is where the things that we wear can play such a big role because the clothes that you wear can change the state that you’re in.
Cognitive psychologists at Northwestern University did some research to try and understand how our clothes can affect our state.
They took two groups of people, they dressed the one group in white lab coats and the other group could wear their street clothes. Then they gave them a task where they had to look for inconsistencies. The people who wore the lab coats had at least fifty percent less errors than the people wearing the street clothes and this led them to come up with a term Enclothed Cognition.
What they suggest is that the clothes that we wear have a symbolic meaning to us and clothes enhance our psychological state.
Maybe you can even think of a time where the outfit that you wore at a specific event or instance influenced or affected the way that people interacted and related to you.
How do your clothes affect you?
If we assume that it’s true that your clothes have a symbolic meaning to you and that it can affect your psychological state, the question then is: what do your clothes that you choose to wear every day do for you?
When you wake up in the morning ask yourself how do I want to feel today more dynamic, in control, productive, calm, more relaxed and once you start doing this now you become intentional in your life now you begin to create your day and you choose what it is that you’re going to put out into the world.
I think there’s a lot of power in our intentional choices and in becoming self-aware enough to say that this is how I want to feel and this is what I’m going to do to support me to get there.
I know from firsthand experience how easy it is to feel lethargic and unmotivated and uninspired if you don’t get yourself dressed in real clothes. And once you’re stuck in that negative cycle it’s very difficult to get yourself out of it.
I think we’ve got enough going on in the world, that we need to do whatever it is that we can to support our mood and our mental well-being and I can tell you now that getting dressed in real clothes will help you do that.
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