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Sara Close | Vancouver Photographer

@sara.c.studio

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Headshots / Movement / Personal Branding 📷🎞️
@sarraaac
@sara.moves

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My first dance photos with @sara.c.studio. 💕💕💕

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“One life.

Just one.

Why aren’t we running

Like we are on fire

Towards our wildest dreams?”

🤍

📸: @sara.c.studio

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My first headshots! Thank you @sara.c.studio. I love each and every one of these photos.

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Leaning into authenticity has changed my life in ways I didn’t expect.

When I started showing up as who I actually am (revealing the parts I previously kept hidden because I thought they were too much, too intense, too unlovable) something shifted. The right people found me. Aligned opportunities appeared. The relationships and projects and environments that actually feel good started taking up more space in my life.

And I stopped reaching for the ones that didn’t.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about authenticity. It’s not just a feeling, it’s a filter. When you stop performing a version of yourself that’s designed to be accepted by everyone, you naturally start attracting the people and things that are genuinely meant for you.

For me it has looked like sharing the parts of myself I spent years concealing. Being chalant, caring out loud, letting things matter, letting people see that they matter. Dressing in a way that actually feels like me. Taking up space without apologizing for it. Making choices because I genuinely want to, not because I think they’ll be approved of.

And refusing to abandon myself to be chosen.

That last one is probably the most powerful and has also been the hardest one for me personally.

But when you stop shrinking to fit what other people want, you create room for what actually fits. And what actually fits feels completely different to anything you’ve ever settled for.

That’s what authenticity looks like in practice.

A daily choice to show up as yourself and the life that gets built when you do. 🤍

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Life has been so full lately 🤍

So much gratitude for all the blessings in my life.

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“I want to change my body” does not have to mean “my body is wrong.”

You can want to lose fat. You can want to build muscle and look different than you do right now. Those are completely valid goals and I will never tell you they are not.

But the version of this work that starts from shame, that treats the body as a problem to be fixed, that tells you to earn your confidence after you have earned your results? That version does not lead anywhere good. I have watched it enough times to know.

The version that lasts looks different. It starts with understanding your body rather than fighting it. It is built on self-respect rather than punishment. It gets physically stronger and more genuinely confident at the same time, because those things turn out to be deeply connected.

You can want to change your body. You can also know that you were already worthy of care before anything changed.

Both of those things are true at the same time.

I am creating something I am really excited about and it’s going to be built around this. Details coming soon.

📸: @sara.c.studio

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Probably thinking about what to eat later 💭

Food is 💯 my love language 😅

📸: @sara.c.studio

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“Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is have fun.”

Fun maxxing the shit out of this September as I officially enter my mid thirties at the end of the month 🥰🤍

📸: @sara.c.studio

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Do you practice meditation?

I have been leaning hard into meditation lately and I am really starting to see the benefits carry over into my everyday life.

For me, meditation helps to create space between my true self/spirit and my thoughts, feelings, and experiences as a human being. It also helps me to ground into the present. So many of the thoughts that I witness while in meditation are thinking about the past or the future and when I catch myself in those moments, I try to label them as “past” or “future” and then come back to something in the present like my breath, the feel of my seat, or the sounds around me.

I am finding now that I have been meditating regularly for a while that I am able to catch myself when my mind starts to gravitate toward the past or future in ordinary, daily moments and when I do, I aim to bring myself back to the present the same way I would in meditation. How lovely!

I have also been listening to a lot of Abraham Hicks lately. If you don’t know who Abraham is, it’s worth looking her/them up.

Abraham talks a lot about getting into vibrational alignment with our desires and that the best way to do that is to be in a positive frame of mind/a joyful state. But what happens if you struggle to reframe when feeling negative thoughts?

For example, so many of you likely struggle with thoughts about your body or body image. What happens if you just can’t think positive thoughts about yourself or your body but you desire a better relationship with these things? Abraham says the next best thing is to aim to think no thoughts or to practice mindfulness, aka, to focus on the sounds around you, the smells, the feelings, your breath, etc. In other words, stop the negative thinking by focusing on something else.

And what better way to practice that than in meditation?!

So to tie this all together…

If you struggle with negative thinking around your body and you want to cultivate a better relationship with yourself and your body image, a great place to start is working on mindfulness, which I have personally found the practice of meditation to be extremely helpful for.

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Are you afraid of success?

I recently realized that in certain areas of my life, I absolutely am.

You see, success requires us to get out of our comfort bubble. It requires us to become bigger versions of ourselves and for some of us (most of us) that’s scary.

This fear is mostly subconscious too. We make excuses for why we don’t show up for ourselves. I don’t have time. I’m too tired. I can’t afford it. You get the idea.

But the truth is, most of these excuses are just a cover up for the real reason we’re not showing up which is:

“I’m afraid of the person I’d have to become when I succeed.”

Changing your body and your habits will require you to become a different version of yourself and live your life differently, especially if you plan to sustain those changes long term. It might also invite attention from others or “being seen” to a greater extent.

This can feel deeply uncomfortable and so we self-sabotage before we are made to feel that discomfort.

Recognize this: the pain of staying the same will eventually outweigh the pain of growing/changing and the sooner you get out of your own damn way, the less pain you’ll have to endure.

So, when you find yourself making excuses for why you can’t do something, be honest with yourself. Are your excuses just a cover up for your fear of success? And, how much pain are you willing to endure staying in your comfort bubble, before you admit that?

Feel the fear and do it anyway 🤍

📸: @sara.c.studio

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