Women’s Services and Resources hosts 10-day self-worth challenge

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From left: Kylee Marshall, Cooper Brown and Taryn Royall participated in the 2016 BE YOU campaign. Last years’ campaign provided students with an opportunity to get back in tune with their self-worth. (Women’s Services and Resources)

BYU Women’s Services and Resources is launching their annual BE YOU campaign with the hope of reshaping the ideas and attitudes of self-worth promoted in today’s popular culture.

The 10-day challenge provides education, resources and positive experiences to all women and men struggling with lack of self-acceptance or perfectionism, according to the campaign’s official website.

Director of Women’s Services and Resources Dixie Sevison said self-worth is often forgotten because of popular culture’s emphasis on self-image.

“Part of this campaign is helping people get quiet enough to get in touch with their self-worth and remember it,” Sevison said. “I think with the activities each day in the campaign there is time for the individual to really get quiet and do self-reflection.”

The campaign will run September 20–29, each day consisting of challenges based on different “BE” statements to allow healthy habits and thoughts to be developed.

Madison Fullmer Hunt, the campaign and event coordinator at Women’s Services and Resources, said there is research backing up each of the BE YOU challenges.

“For example, we used ‘be grateful’ as one of the statements because research has shown that people who are more grateful have fewer problems with anxiety and depression,” Hunt said.

Women’s Services and Resources will also be hosting six events throughout the campaign, including keynote speaker John Bytheway, a Polaroid photo shoot in Brigham Square, free yoga practice, an intuitive eating workshop, canvas painting and finally an ice cream celebration to conclude the campaign.

Lauren Silva, a junior at BYU studying family life, said it is important to talk about self-worth in the media’s culture of comparison and to cultivate habits of positive self-talk.

“We talk about how we need to be careful with what we say to others, but we also need to be extremely careful about what we say to ourselves,” Silva said. “We should catch ourselves when negativity comes and rewrite those thoughts into something more positive.”

Sevison said she hopes the campaign will allow students to experience more self-love and see themselves as their Heavenly Father does.

“We get so caught up in what the media says is the perfect individual that we forget we have a loving Heavenly Father who created us and that we are of worth,” Sevison said.

The full guide to the BE YOU challenges and journaling prompts can be found here.

Participating students are encouraged to journal about and their experiences and share them on social media using the hashtag #byuBEYOU.

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