I Didn't Believe In Myself For Most Of My Life. Meditation Changed That, And Then It Changed My Face

Not to sound dramatic, but I grew up kind of hating myself. Hate is a strong word, but it's fair to say that for most of my adolescent and adult life I had a cripplingly low sense of self-esteem. No matter what I did, I could never shake the feeling that I just wasn't good enough, smart enough, talented enough, funny enough, likeable enough or attractive enough to be worth anything. The lack of confidence was palpable, and it set in like a rot.

About five years ago, during a particularly challenging period, I stumbled upon a practice that changed my life. At the time I was working at one of the best creative production studios in the world, had been promoted, just gotten married, bought a flat and got a puppy. Objectively, my life looked great on paper. But inside I felt flat, frustrated and disillusioned. I knew I wanted to leave my job, but after a series of career pivots and a failed attempt at an acting career, I had no idea where to turn.

It was in this period, which I now refer to as The Void, that I discovered meditation. I had dabbled before, experimenting with apps like Calm and Headspace in my twenties as a way to try and manage my anxiety. It always helped, but it was never a habit I could maintain with any real consistency. During The Void, everything changed.

I got so deep into meditation that at one point I was practising for an hour every day. I fell into a rabbit hole of self-development, reading, researching and listening to everything I could find on meditation and the subconscious mind. It became my obsession.

At first, the shifts were imperceptible. Aside from feeling a little calmer, I didn't notice anything different. But something compelled me to keep showing up. And in time, things started to change. In a way that was so profound it surprised me. New clarity started emerging about my career. Ideas that had been there all along, I just hadn't believed in myself enough to act on them. I felt more inspired, more optimistic and more alive than I had in years.

But perhaps the most unexpected shift of all was that my physical appearance started to change. Without consciously trying, I lost weight, my skin cleared up, my hair grew longer and even my face began to look different. Strange as it sounds, the glow-up was undeniable.

There is so much noise in the media around achieving the perfect glow-up: the latest makeup trend, the new lip stain, the fat loss hack. And while those things may have their place, what I have learnt is this: the most powerful glow-ups have nothing to do with skincare, gym routines or aesthetics. What everyone sees on the outside is simply the by-product of something shifting on the inside. And meditation is the most powerful tool I have found for creating that shift.

Opening the door between the conscious and the subconscious

Through meditation, I began to learn about neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to grow new neural pathways, and the idea that with practice and consistency we can, in essence, rewire how we think, feel and what we believe about ourselves.

Scientists estimate that around 95% of our thoughts, decisions and behaviours are driven by the subconscious mind. Not the conscious, rational part that sets intentions and makes plans, but the deep, automatic programming running quietly in the background. The subconscious is shaped by the beliefs we formed in childhood: the inner critic that pipes up every time you look in the mirror, the habits that seem impossible to break no matter how much willpower you throw at them.

This is where meditation comes in. Meditation opens the door between the conscious and subconscious mind, and it is from within that deeper layer that we can begin to create a new story about who we are and what we are capable of.

In a study from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, participants who completed just eight weeks of daily mindfulness meditation showed measurable changes in the grey matter of their brains in regions linked to self-awareness, emotional regulation, memory and stress. The brain is far more malleable than we were once led to believe, and thanks to neuroplasticity, we can literally change its architecture.

When you meditate consistently, you are not just relaxing. You are weakening the neural pathways that keep you stuck in old patterns, and building new ones that support a calmer, more confident version of yourself.

Deep meditation also induces what neuroscientists call theta brainwaves, the slow, dreamy frequency your brain operates in just before you fall asleep. This is the state where the brain is most open to forming new connections, and the optimal window for subconscious reprogramming. For rewriting the story you tell about yourself.

Creating a new self-concept

A 2024 study of young women practising Transcendental Meditation found measurable improvements in self-esteem, self-efficacy and resilience after just five months of regular practice. And a review published in PMC found that shifts in how we relate to ourselves, what researchers call the "mindful self", play a significant role in improving both mental and physical health outcomes.

In plain terms: meditation changes how you see yourself. And when you change how you see yourself, everything else follows.

During The Void, I read a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz that fascinated me. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who noticed something interesting in his patients: often, surgery would lead to an almost immediate change in personality. Patients he described as having a failure-type personality would be transformed to a success-type personality almost overnight. But in other patients, even after surgery, their personality remained exactly the same. From this, Maltz began to surmise that the transformation had less to do with physical appearance and more to do with the self-concept the person held about themselves.

In other words, we all carry an unconscious sense of who we are, which shapes how we think, how we feel and what we believe is possible. Our self-concept drives how we behave, which in turn shapes our reality.

This is where meditation becomes so powerful. Unlike therapy, affirmations or even surgery, meditation works directly on the subconscious, the part of the mind where your self-concept actually lives. Through consistent practice, you are not just thinking differently on the surface. You are reaching the deeper layer of programming that decides what you believe you deserve, what you are capable of, and who you fundamentally are. Slowly, and then all at once, the old identity starts to loosen its grip and a new one begins to take its place.

And it is by shifting the self-concept, through consistent meditation and visualisation, that the outer glow-up occurs. When you change how you see yourself, you start making different choices, ones aligned with the version of yourself you are becoming. For me, this looked like developing a consistent yoga practice, prioritising nutrition, going to the gym, quitting smoking and generally investing in myself in ways that felt nourishing rather than like a sacrifice. For the first time in my life, I was no longer relying on willpower. I had simply become a person who made those choices naturally. I started treating myself like someone who deserved to feel good, and as a result, I started to not only feel, but actually look better than ever.