Author Matt Mathews On How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself

I think self-worth is a movement. Every single person on this planet needs to feel worthy of something and teaching people how to accomplish that is my mission.

As a part of my series about “Connecting With Yourself To Live With Better Relationships” I had the pleasure to interview Matt Mathews. Born and based in Birmingham, Alabama, the award-wining photographer, author and educator, is teaching people about the importance of self-worth and being one’s own superhero through unlocking their true potential and achieving their destiny.

With a mission to teach women to love their bodies, feel amazing in their own skin, and see themselves through the lens in which others view them, Matt ventured into the transformative art of boudoir photography. Matt’s ability to see people for who they are and what they are capable of becoming, which translate in his work as a successful photographer, can be attributed to his troubled upbringing.

Born into a loving household to parents who did their best to provide for him and his siblings, Matt wasn’t a stranger to the harsh and haunting realities of drug abuse and alcoholism, which touched his brother, sister, and birth mother. Despite the destructive cycle of these vices, Matt was determined to learn from the paths his family members had chosen, and made a conscious decision to not allow himself to fall into the same traps.

Gifted, charismatic, and humble, Matt Matthews continues to spread positivity through his various talents. Oftentimes using his own experiences of how it is possible to overcome the most unlikely of scenarios in order to achieve success and find happiness in one’s own life.

You can check out his beautiful work here.

Thank you so much for joining us! I’d love to begin by asking you to give us the backstory as to what brought you to this specific career path.

I got a job as a teenager working at WalMart Portrait studios. Little did I know, this would change my life forever. I began to fall in love with photography. I took all of my money I made from my high school graduation and purchased a Canon Rebel Kit from Sam’s Club. I began photographing anything and everything I could. Terribly, I might add. Eventually through the muddle of finding myself and what I love, I stumbled upon Boudoir. My mom struggled with depression, body image, and self-worth her entire life so for her birthday in 2014 I photographed a boudoir session for her. She told me it was the most beautiful she had ever felt and I knew this was what I was meant to do.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you hope that they might help people along their path to self-understanding or a better sense of wellbeing in their relationships?

I am ALWAYS working on something. I recently released my self-help, memoir, Uncovered: The Naked Truth of Life, Love and Addiction and that alone was a huge undertaking. I am currently opening a lingerie/self-care boutique where I will have my new candle and skin care line as well as beautiful lingerie to help every woman feel like a goddess.

Do you have a personal story that you can share with our readers about your struggles or successes along your journey of self-understanding and self-love? Was there ever a tipping point that triggered a change regarding your feelings of self acceptance?

Struggles are something that I am very familiar with. Nothing really came easy for me. I grew up with a family of addicts and breaking the cycle was something that I knew had to be done in order to not be another statistic. I also grew up hating my body, hating the way I looked, and hating the way I felt. I was the kid that never took his shirt off to even go swimming, I was miserable. I like to think that once I got into boudoir and got older my brain grabbed me and said “Get it together. You’re amazing.” As a boudoir photographer, I knew I had to practice what I was preaching. How could I tell other people to love their bodies if I couldn’t even love mine? I knew self-love would change so much about my life. I began being nicer to myself and loving myself with where I was at that moment in life and it changed everything.

According to a recent study cited in Cosmopolitan, in the US, only about 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women are “very satisfied with their appearance.” Could you talk about what some of the causes might be, as well as the consequences?

I think we have this misconception about what our bodies should look like. If we aren’t skinny enough, strong enough, tall enough, or whatever else you think you aren’t enough of. It’s all B.S. We are all so uniquely different and we should be proud of that. When we can’t be happy with where we are then it trickles over into the rest of our lives. Relationships with your friends and family also become burdened and hard because we have such a problem with who WE are.

As cheesy as it might sound to truly understand and “love yourself,” can you share with our readers a few reasons why it’s so important?

If you can’t love yourself how do you expect anyone else to love you? We have to love ourselves first before we can allow anyone else to do it for us. Loving yourself is the greatest revolution of all time. I look in the mirror all the time and say, “You are B-A-D and can’t nobody tell you nothing”. It’s the little things.

Why do you think people stay in mediocre relationships? What advice would you give to our readers regarding this?

Relationships are hard. People want so badly to be loved and accepted. Its life. I’ve been there too and I can’t say I’ll never be there again. I think as humans we take what we can get and we settle for it. We don’t believe our worth, we don’t believe there is something better, and we settle for whatever is handed to us. Well, I am here to tell you this ain’t a sandwich in the cafeteria. Quit accepting things that you don’t love or feel worthy of. The more you settle for things that don’t make you happy, the unhappier you will be. It’s okay to say no.

When I talk about self-love and understanding I don’t necessarily mean blindly loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. Many times self-understanding requires us to reflect and ask ourselves the tough questions, to realize perhaps where we need to make changes in ourselves to be better not only for ourselves but our relationships. What are some of those tough questions that will cut through the safe space of comfort we like to maintain, that our readers might want to ask themselves? Can you share an example of a time that you had to reflect and realize how you needed to make changes?

Are you truly happy? What happens if you fail? These are questions I still ask myself a lot. We worry so much about failure or about making others happy that we can’t do that for ourselves. I believe we are in control of our happiness and love with happiness comes from our own self-worth and love for ourselves. Ask yourself, what makes me happy? Then do exactly that. I remember a time where I worked out every day and I was in the best shape of my life. I injured my back and struggled for over a year with what I was able and not able to do. I finally decided it was time to quit the gym for good. I still ride horses and clean stalls daily so that was my workout but going to the gym everyday was something of the past. I knew that I had to find things that kept me happy but it was hard. I began to hate my body again. I had liposuction in January of 2019 and I realized after I had done it that I put my body through so much pain and torture. And for what? For someone to look at me and think I was skinny? WHO CARES? It was then that I had to decide what was best for me and what was best for my body. I had to wake up and start loving myself again regardless of others’ opinions of me. I was the only thing stopping myself.

So many don’t really know how to be alone, or are afraid of it. How important is it for us to have, and practice, that capacity to truly be with ourselves and be alone (literally or metaphorically)?

We will never be able to fully be happy or make someone else happy if we can’t be alone and be happy first. I know so many people that can’t be alone and it affects so much about their lives. I believe we have to get ourselves to a space where we can be fully in love with ourselves and alone first. Then from there, when we’ve learned how to live life alone, we can learn how to add another person into it. Even when the time comes to add that person you still need “alone time,” time to reflect, to think about your actions, and what is going on in your life. This is important.

How does achieving a certain level of self-understanding and self-love then affect your ability to connect with and deepen your relationships with others?

Like I stated earlier, when you love yourself, you’re able to love others better. When you truly love who you are then you become a happier person. In other words, you have better relationships with the people you love. It’s always the people who don’t love who they are that cut down others or treat other people as unworthy. Look at the people around you, how do they treat other people?

In your experience, what should a) individuals and b) society, do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?

We have to take better care of ourselves: our minds, our bodies, all of it. We get one body and it does such amazing things for us. Take care of it. Take time for your mental health. I always tell people who are struggling with self-love to look into the mirror and tell yourself three things you like about yourself. The key is to not think about all of the things you hate.

What are 5 strategies that you implement to maintain your connection with and love for yourself, that our readers might learn from? Could you please give a story or example for each?

I love holistic medicine. I don’t push chemicals and other toxic crap into my body and this helps me maintain a healthy and clear mind which in turn keeps me positive about myself. I also take a lot of time for myself. I like to ride my horses and spend time on the farm. It keeps me grounded and sane. I also surround myself with positive people. I am a firm believer in energy and the energy around you can really affect how you care for yourself. I enjoy being able to help other people learn the art of self-worth. Showing someone how amazing they are only shows me how incredibly worthy I am. Lastly, I had to learn to quit comparing myself to others. Comparison is the thief of joy and I learned that comparing myself to anyone else only hindered my dreams. Push to be a better version of yourself, not someone else.

What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources for self-psychology, intimacy, or relationships? What do you love about each one and how does it resonate with you?

Umm my book, duh! Okay, jokes aside I really love Jewel’s memoir, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story. It was such an inspirational story on her journey to self-love and health and it really pushed me to be a better version of myself. I am not a HUGE reader or podcast listener but I truly believe in keeping it real and being authentic. Anything that accomplishes those two things is gold.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Maybe we’ll inspire our readers to start it…

I think self-worth is a movement. Every single person on this planet needs to feel worthy of something and teaching people how to accomplish that is my mission.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that you use to guide yourself by?

Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life and how our readers might learn to live by it in theirs?

“Breathe; Just Breathe.” I got this tattooed on my ribs as a teenager. I always told myself to just breathe whenever things are getting hard. I know I can’t change certain situations but I could change how I react to it and how it makes me feel. We have to remember, nothing is forever: the mental state, where you are physically, where you are emotionally, it’s all temporary and eventually passes. So, breathe. Allow yourself the time to feel and be present and know that it does get better. Life keeps going, so hold on and keep moving forward.

Thank you so much for your time and for your inspiring insights!