You can’t do it!
You should feel guilty!
Your hips are too wide!
You look old!
Your nose is too big!
You should give up!
You’re ridiculous…
Hasn’t the self-loathing ritual we are all guilty of become all too exhausting? I don’t know about you but, I’m. Over. It.
September has turned into the “other New Year”. It’s when we all go back to our routine; healthier eating habits and life is a little less feral. With the routine of getting back on track, I propose we get our attitudes towards ourselves on track, too. Who’s with me?
Our bodies are intelligent and will function in ways we have even yet to begin to understand. When you tell your body that it isn’t beautiful, it will inevitably turn against you. With the recent passing of the wonderful Louise Hay this has been top of mind for me. She believed that there were mental causes for physical illness. In other words, your biography is your biology.
You can exercise and eat well but if there isn’t balance between your mind, body and spirit, you will remain stagnant in many aspects of your life. Mental thought patterns will shape our experiences.
I am part of an exercise challenge called “The Sweaty Selfie Challenge” (thanks to a Boot camp in the Beaches with Claire Boxall).The idea of the challenge is to exercise 5 days a week for a minimum of 30 min/day and then take a picture of your sweaty self after a workout and post it to the FB group, as proof.
The challenge has been going on for 5 months and it has taken me that long to learn how to love the pictures I have been posting. It’s quite humbling to share a picture of yourself post workout at 6am. At first all I saw were my imperfections. I said unkind things to myself like “I see wrinkles” and “who do you think you are, you are not as fit as the other women!”
But recently my tune has changed. I’m starting to feel comfortable with it all because this is me! I'm feeling accomplished and strong! I’m making an effort to say kinder things to myself like “great effort today” because the rest is just all too exhausting. It has taken me 40 years but I think I’m starting to get it.
It’s interesting to me that somewhere along the way as we go through adolescence into adulthood, we forget how to love ourselves the way we did as little ones. As Louise Hay points out in her book “Heal your body” as babies we had such courage. We could share our feelings openly, we loved ourselves completely and were never afraid to ask for what we needed. As time went on we learned to criticize ourselves, to feel awkward about speaking up and forget about the importance of pure self-love. Let’s unlearn that, shall we?
Let’s break the patterns of guilt, regret and negative self talk and build ourselves up the way we should. I will today thank my beautiful child bearing hips! I will walk with a little more swagger knowing that they helped carry my two beautiful babies.
I will not feel guilty and convince myself that I’m lazy for not cleaning up the breakfast dishes right away and I will know that I am still a productive entrepreneur if I decide to take a coffee break in the sun.
Pay attention to the words and negative mantras which have become so easy to think and break the patterns. Do the opposite and just watch the difference it will make in your day. Also, remember to eat fermented food, would ya!? 😉
Just Shut Up and Try It.