Believe it or not, if you’re not where you want to be in terms of your image, you may be getting in your own way without even realizing it.

There are two things that could be getting in the way of your style development: associations and comfort zone level.

Walking around New York City, I see a lot of people who dress the same. In my head, I’m saying, “C’mon people!”

I believe that true style is an expression of the unique individual, not just going for what is widely accepted by the masses.

When people who want to upgrade their style leave their comfort zone, like trying a new hairstyle, they automatically go into “let’s test this out” mode. This is fine, until they get bad reactions, and it totally thwarts their progress. The negative emotions they get condition them to stop trying to “change.”

This is one reason why people end up dressing and looking “safe.” Which means looking around at what everyone else is doing, and staying within the invisible boundaries. It snuffs out the fire of our own individual creativity before it even has a chance to grow into something self-sustainable.

This article will teach you how to assess the associations we’ve built up over the years, and why this is important. With the new awareness you’ll gain from this article, you’ll be able to reach your highest level of style, as well as apply what you learn to all other areas of your life.

Let’s get to it.

ASSOCIATIONS THAT HOLD YOU BACK

Have you ever gone out to meet women or friends after getting a new outfit or haircut, have a terrible night, and end up blaming it on your new look?

We all have periods in our life where we try to upgrade our image. This may be in the form of new clothing, a new hairstyle you’ve wanted to try for a while, a tattoo, piercing, or anything else that changes your image towards the newer version of “you.”

We never know how the vision will turn out in the end till we try something, so we take risks. Great.

But what happens naturally to most people when they take risks is that they start to look to others for approval or opinions along the way.

And most people don’t just want random opinions, but answers to specific questions. Rarely do we ask others for open-ended feedback. Most of the time we want a straight “yes” or “no,” “good”or “bad.”

“Does my new haircut look cool?”

“Does this new shirt work for me?”

Then whenever you go out, you may get a bunch of great comments like:

“Wow, I LOVE your new haircut!” or “That is a freakin’ awesome shirt.”

Of course, sometimes we’ll get negative comments too, and we can’t ignore them. But I find it funny that as long as the number of positive comments are higher than the negative, we assume the negative people have noooo idea what they are talking about. We’ll rationalize it by telling ourselves thinks like, “They have no taste in style anyway.”

This is an ineffective approach to building your style because it’s highly based on the emotional response and validation of others.

It’s what goes behind the scenes when someone says “Dude, this is my lucky jacket, girls love when I wear this.” Maybe girls do love the jacket, but do they love you?

His associations with his jacket will create a superstition. Then, if he has a bad night, he can simply blame it on something external - like his jacket. What’s even more funny is when he starts to get weak responses from women, he’ll start to believe that his jacket has “lost it’s magic,” and get a new one.

The worse part is that this kind of thinking will only result in you wearing your “best response” pieces out all the time, and never wearing anything that doesn’t get a desired response.

What’s wrong with this you ask?

What’s wrong is that it’ll be a huge obstacle to you becoming the best version of yourself. And who doesn’t want to become their best self?

If you read this blog, you’re probably someone who likes to improve all areas of his life. One of our visions with Kinowear.com is to elevate image to it’s truest purpose-to be the best creative expression of the individual’s inherently unique personality.

Don’t get me wrong, getting opinions and feedback from other people is great. But it’s only good for you if it’s not about the opinions. Sometimes I’ll ask a girl for her opinion on an outfit, but not because I’m looking for a good response. Instead, I’ll ask just to check for myself if I’m conveying the message that I want to send out there. Still, I’ve gotten way too many random responses to take what anyone says seriously. So in the end, I present myself the way that I want to and leave it at that.

The mentality is, “This is who I am, take it or leave it.”And that’s not coming from a bitter place. It’s just a fact that my outer appearance is simply a reflection of who I am on the inside. And who I am inside is the best that it can be within a given moment. It’s not about not living up to other people’s expectations.

Most people’s outer expressions are not infused with their individual creativity. It’s mostly just a variation of what’s widely popularized.

There are three groups of people when it comes to style. The first group of people creatively do their own thing and don’t really think too much about it. What happens though is that sometimes what they wear or do becomes a trend. They become the trend-setters. The second group of people are always on top of the newest trends. They take pride in being the first to copy something off a runway or some other source of inspiration. The last group of people, don’t really put too much thought into their style, and they only start to care when they see that everyone else is starting to follow the current trends. Basically they are the last to hop on the “bandwagon.”

This isn’t only true with style. For the most part each group’s attitude can be seen in other areas of their life as well. There is no group that is “better” or “worse,” but I highly respect anyone who expresses themselves in their own creative way.

Someone who’s not at all comparing themselves to their neighbors but just freely expressing themselves the way that they want.

It’s also not coming from a place of “Hey, look at me, I’m creative and different.” Sometimes we’ll read an article like this and do the opposite of “following” and TRY to be “different” than “everyone else.”

When you’re trying to be “different,” you’re still looking for other people’s approval. You’re trying to be the “different guy.” The great news is that we don’t have to try at all, we are already different. We sometimes forget that “everyone else” is not one entity but made up of separate, uniquely different individuals.

If you want to create a look that is truly yours, you must express yourself the way you want to without needing the approval. You can take pride in the way you express yourself - that’s fine - because image does affect the way people view you. But you should do it out of your own self-respect rather than trying to please others.

It’s really an art, and as you start to express yourself the way that YOU want, there will be moments where you have to be honest and check yourself. I used to dress up for other people, to get certain responses from men and women alike, but now I just dress up out of respect for myself. It’s the same way that I don’t eat fast food, not to please other people, but out of respect for my own body.

I’ve realized that the way you look reflects how much respect you have for yourself, and that there is more joy in your life when you’re coming from this place of true self-esteem rather than chasing the surface level ego boosts we can get from others.

We all have “good” and “bad” associations with certain styles built into our minds, whether through personal experience or not.

It’s important to know where these associations come from, so that we can assess whether or not they’re congruent with our individuality or merely adopted from others. If all of your associations of “good” and “bad” are decided by others, then your style starts to become something that isn’t coming from your core identity, but an attempt to fit into a mold.

Sometimes, I’ll have a client refuse to wear something because of some childhood association with it. My last client wouldn’t wear a plaid shirt because it reminded him of a lumberjack and wouldn’t wear the color brown because it was too “cowboy.” He’s from Switzerland, and apparently his peers have a “no brown in town” motto. In New York, brown is like the new black. I still crack up thinking about the moment. If he’s reading this he’s probably laughing as well. What’s up man!

There is nothing inherently wrong with having associations with clothing, or blaming our shirt when we have a bad night, but what I want to bring to the table here is more awareness to where they come from — so that we then have choice over the matter rather than just reacting to our conditioning.

THINK ABOUT THIS:

If I took my last client to a fashion show, and every model was wearing plaid or brown, and all these beautiful women sitting next to us were saying things like “Oh my god, I love plaid on guys, I think it’s so sexy… it especially goes well with brown!” Do you think his associations with it would change? Even if someone said “Plaid reminds me of lumberjacks but lumberjacks make me horny,” it’s naturally going to change his view of plaid instantly. I’ll look over at him and already see him halfway towards the exit, going to buy some plaid and brown.

It’s also taught in Neural Linguistic Programming, that just by changing our associations with things, we can affect so many of our decisions and actions in life.

What we want is more CHOICE in developing our own style, rather than just reacting to conditioned beliefs or simply looking at what is accepted by the mainstream.

Stop right now and think about some of the associations you have. With certain types of clothing, colors, hairstyles, food, etc. When you dig behind your beliefs, you’ll realize that many beliefs you hold weren’t adopted from truth or thorough research, but mostly things that you’ve heard somewhere.

Most people go through their entire lives carrying associations or beliefs they’ve adopted from random sources.

For example, I have a friend named Jen who loves tomatoes. For years, every time she went out to eat with one of her close friends (who we’ll call Bob), she would get something with tomatoes in it, and Bob would say “I can’t believe you love tomatoes, that’s gross.” At one point, Jen asked him why he dislikes tomatoes, and he vaguely answered, “I don’t know, I just do.” Then after constant nagging from Jen, Bob finally gave in and agreed to try one. To his surprise, he found himself saying, “Wow, tomatoes are pretty delicious.” All these years he’s missed out on enjoying tomatoes, just because of one association.

Bob believes that his dislike of tomatoes developed during his childhood, when all his other friends would talk about how much they hated vegetables. He just assumed they must taste horrible if everyone else is saying that they do.

So from time to time, whenever you voice your opinions, check to see if you really know that your opinions are coming from a place of true personal experience, and a desire to keep it that way, rather than merely absorbed from your environment or past associations.

Caution:

It’s important to know that there is an instance when a bad association, although coming from personal experience, may be highly influenced by another factor:

When something is way out of our usual comfort zone.

OUR COMFORT ZONE AND HOW IT AFFECTS OUR CHOICE

Going a little bit out of your comfort zone rarely effects our experience of something. It’s only when we take a BIG leap that it gets really uncomfortable.

Let’s say that you want to take your style to the next level – and I mean the next “STAGE IN EVOLUTION!”

Whenever we face great discomfort at any moment, we usually look for the quickest fix. We have no idea what we’re doing so we’re instantly looking for other people to tell us if we’re on the right path.

If the other person comes from a place where they’ve been through the journey themselves, then the advice could be sound, but I’m talking about going to random people and asking for their opinion. You should trust in yourself and life to give you the lessons you need to achieve your goals. Even if you’ve made the smallest visions in your mind into reality - like redecorating your room - you have what it takes to make bigger visions happen. The only thing that stops us is the lie that bigger things are harder. It’s not harder, it just takes a lot more of the small steps to get there.

So let’s say that in your mind, your vision is to always look like a million bucks. Whether that means you wearing high quality suits around or being the humble millionaire with a tailored dress shirt and jeans, it doesn’t matter. What will get in your way is if people start to tell you that you look like this or that, and it affects your OWN opinion of what YOU want.

When you do something that is out of your current comfort zone, your brain will start to go “Hey, this isn’t what I’m used to!” and try to find reasons to validate that it’s “wrong,” so you can quickly “fix” that feeling of discomfort.

For example, let’s say that you own a home business, and you are your own boss. You could do work in your office in your underwear and it wouldn’t matter. But let’s just say that you wanted to have some more self-respect and not look like a slob every time you looked in the mirror.

You picture yourself working in your office with a finely tailored suit because you know that it’ll have an affect on how you feel. You know that when you feel like a million bucks, you are more productive and enjoy work. So you go buy yourself a decent suit and you start to wear it in hopes that it’ll make you feel more motivated in your home business.

At first, it feels GREAT! Then as the days go by, it gets frustrating to get yourself to tie a tie correctly when you don’t even have to wear one, and your girlfriend keeps nagging you that you’re not a “suit” kind of guy.

Or let’s say you’ve never worn a blazer to a club, but you decide to because of an inspirational picture you saw in a Kinowear article. You put one on and head to the club, and expect girls to check you out left and right because you feel so great. But as the night goes on, you keep noticing it’s there because you’re not used to wearing one. Inevitably you’ll start blaming your jacket if you get an ugly grimace from a woman, because it’s already the source of your discomfort (when it could just be you).

This is how going too far out of your comfort zone, will set up a situation where it’s easier to build a negative association with change, and you already know how much a negative association can affect an area of your life.

MAKE AWARENESS A PART OF YOU

The final question is, how can we effectively streamline the development of our own creative style without being stifled?

First, bring awareness to the associations you have with certain items of clothing. In fact, practice doing throughout the day for whatever comes up.

For example: someone asks you if you want a burger from a fast food joint, and you find yourself saying “Gross, no thanks.” Ask yourself where that response comes from. Maybe you learned in health class that the processed meat and saturated fat has no nutritional value and will only have negative effects on your health. Which science says is true.

Bring this type of awareness to managing your image, you’ll be surprised at where some beliefs come from. Doing this exercise has made me re-think and re-look at many beliefs that I had, and sometimes a change in association would shift an ENTIRE set of underlying sub-beliefs, changing a huge part of my life. You could be living the way you don’t want to be living, without even knowing it!

Second, if you have a negative personal experience with something, see if it’s only because of the natural discomfort that comes from doing something outside of your comfort zone.

An effective way I’ve found to consistently grow without biased negative associations, is to take things one step at a time.

Don’t get too ahead of yourself, unless you have the skill of not caring about what other people think (which is hard for 90% of the human population).

Take your development one step at a time. This way, the process of growth will be more comfortable, and as you fully own that next step, then you can go to the next, creating CONSISTENT improvement in whatever you’re doing.

When you try to do TOO much, you’re putting so much pressure and frustration on yourself that you’ll likely revert back to your original habits. If it’s with the style of your clothing, learn how to dress well with the basics before moving onto flashy pieces.

Now go express yourself through your own unique image!

Wooooooooo!

Many people have cut the time it takes to find their own style in HALF with a 1-on-1 consultation. Check out our consultation page.