“I have to have a perfect body, or I won’t be beautiful.” “I have to diet and exercise perfectly, or I’ve blown it.” “I have to be perfect, or people won’t love me or I won’t’ be a success.” Feeling like you have to be and do things perfectly or you are a “failure” is a common attribute of the women with whom I work. Perfection is an expectation that can never be met. The stress of trying to fulfill this unmeetable expectation can be a serious blow to your wellness—and weight loss efforts. If you think about it, life would actually get pretty boring if you were perfect. You would never learn anything, get to challenge yourself or grow. It would be as if everything in the world were yellow. And while you may love yellow, you appreciate it so much more if there’s a little blue, pink, or green thrown in for some contrast. Your body is your body. Its curves and shape are uniquely you. Its size and contours are different from everyone else on the planet. It is that uniqueness that makes you beautiful, not your conformity. What is optimal for your body will be different from everyone else. While using another’s body to inspire you to meet your goals can be a useful tool, if you are comparing your body and finding fault or reason to criticize yourself, you are actually doing harm to you, your body, and are unknowingly sabotaging your weight-loss goals. Seeing where you aren’t perfect is an opportunity. Engaging in the process of figuring out what you do want, what you are doing right, determining what is optimal for you, and valuing how you are unique will […]
What Did You Expect? Five Tips for Creating Success
How hard will you work to reach a goal if in your heart you don’t expect to achieve it? This is the simple but great challenge that all of our dreams face—expecting that you can do whatever it is that you want in the face of people pointing out the obstacles or inadequacies, previous personal experiences, and numerous examples of failure. In your heart and gut, you have to know that you can do it no matter what. And when you do fall into fear and doubt, you have to get back up and move towards that inner belief anyway. Doubt is the distance your mind must travel in order to be able to reach your goals. If it dictates your decisions, there will always be a part of you holding back, which means you will almost certainly fall short of the mark. But how do you mentally move from doubt to expectation? Slowly, gently, and one step at a time. Taking a flying leap of faith without the wings of inner knowing is often ill-advised, and can lead to false starts or worse, a crash landing. Here are five tips for crossing from doubt to expectation. Practice how it will feel. Imagine how it will feel to achieve your goal. Pick one word to describe that feeling. What are some other things that give you that feeling? Spend 10 to 15 minutes a day thinking about those things and feeling that feeling. Allowing yourself to experience the feeling of success as much as possible will confirm for your mind that the end result is attainable. Act as if. How would someone who has already achieved your goal think, feel, and act? Begin to act […]
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