Where did you learn what is beautiful? Where did you learn what is ugly? Where did you learn what a perfect body looks like? And how old were you when you came to these conclusions?
A few years ago when walking down the street in Paris we found ourselves taken by the body image represented as "beautiful" by the street lamps in front of the Paris Opera House. Built in the mid-1800's, those lamps are supported by statues of naked women. These castings done in the Neo-Baroque style are curvy, with rounded bellies and by today's standards they all need to go on Weight Watchers, visit Jenny Craig or at very least tighten their abs with a good dose of Pilates.
Our idea of a beautiful body was given to us by the culture we grew up in. By the time we reach puberty we each have decided what we need to be like in order to have the perfect body and by that time, we knew we never would.
One year the two of us led 6 weeks of consecutive courses at a conference center on Maui. The course room had an entire wall of mirrors so we became comfortable seeing ourselves daily in shorts and even from time-to-time in our bikini and swim suit. However when we completed the groups and went to a hotel down near the beach for a bit of R&R, we were surprised to discover that when looking in those mirrors our bodies appeared sadly lacking. It was a lesson, never forgotten, that the culture we are surrounded by can make a direct and immediate impact on our self-perceptions.
If you want to know your body image, begin by paying attention to your internal conversation without taking it personally.
"What?" you might say, "How can I possibly not take how I look and feel personally?"
It is easy once your realize that your thoughts about yourself and how you look are a collection of recordings stored in your internal Jukebox or MP3 player and when the circumstances apply a little pressure you play a familiar tune.
The key to creating something new rather than playing an oldie-but-not-so-goody is awareness. Learning the art of awareness, or self-observation without self-reproach, is a skill-set that can be learned. Like exercising a muscle, the more you simply see things without judging what you see, the more you discover how to neutrally observe yourself. As you discover how to be kind to yourself rather than berate yourself for the body you have, it certainly sets you up to find motivation for living a healthy lifestyle. If every time you step on a scale or go to the gym it is reinforcement that you are "fat," sooner or later you are going to want to quit on yourself.
Want to know a great secret for dissolving a negative body image? Take an anthropological approach. Pretend you are a scientist, observing a culture of one -- yourself. The trick is not to judge what you see but to neutrally observe how you function, including your thought processes. Awareness and kindness is key.
Be kind to yourself right now, not when you lose the weight and not when you continue the exercise routine that you promised yourself you would.
In this moment you are a perfect you. And if you gain or lose some weight, then you will still be you. But if you are kind to yourself right now, and just notice how you are without beating on yourself for what you see, then regardless of your weight, shape or size you will feel satisfied.
Most people are afraid that if they aren't hard on themselves then there will be no motivation to improve, no reason to move and that they will then turn into the world's largest couch potato. Not true. When you are feeling satisfied, and good in your own skin, there is no need to turn to comfort food. That extra cookie isn't a reward when living your life is its own reward. Don't you feel more like moving out into the world and being active in your life when you aren't being hard on yourself? Oddly enough, when you don't pick on yourself, your actions will tend to support a healthy lifestyle and your body is sure to follow.
About the Authors:
Since 1987, internationally acclaimed authors, seminar leaders, and business consultants Ariel and Shya Kane have acted as guides, leading people through the swamp of the mind into the clarity and brilliance of the moment. To find out more about the Kanes and their Transformational Community or to sign up to receive their article of the month, visit their website at http://www.
This riddle keeps our minds wrapped in a never-ending search for truth. You can't have an egg without first having a chicken... but then, where did the chicken come from? It's a conundrum that might also apply to a more elemental issue: who are we and what are we doing?
Do we become what we do... or do we do who we are? You could easily argue either side - depending upon your experience. You might even determine that it's a little of both.
There may not be a single correct answer to this dilemma, but even unsolvable problems offer significant insights into how our minds work and, consequently, how our lives look.
Take this example: how long have you been trying to figure out how to have the life you really want to live? Forever? How many times have you changed relationships, jobs, hair styles, residences - all in pursuit of the wondrous image you have of the perfect life? And where has that gotten you?
If insanity is the belief that you can get a different result from doing the same ineffective thing over and over again, then may I offer a bit of sanity? Rather than pursuing your dream life, become the person that dream life was built for.
Who would you need to BE to live the life you want? Face it, right now you are perfectly suited to the life you have. It fits like a glove. Now, you might not like that fact, but there it is. If you were a different person, you'd be living different life.
So, if you want a different life from what you now have - become the person who has that kind of life. Work on the inside first and the outside will be drawn to you like flies to honey. It will be a natural extension of who you have become. There will be no struggle.
Our problem is that we want a different life, but we don't want to change. There's that definition of insanity again. Or, perhaps we're not sure how to change. One of my favorite book titles is The Answer to How is Yes
Your mind is a miracle of life. It has the power to imagine and create anything. Yes, even yours! But, the question how jams a wrench in its gears and it just stops considering a solution. It already knows you don't expect to find an answer, so it doesn't chase that goose.
You already know how to live the life you want to live. But, from your current state of being, that life isn't possible. Become the person that that life fits. What would you need to believe to have that life? What would you need to read, see, eat, do? What we believe and what we receive are very predictable. Look at the people who are living the life you want. Who are they, really?
If you want to have career success, become who successful people are. If you want to have loving relationships, become who those with loving relationships are. If you want well-being in body and mind, become who those with well-being are.
It's not enough just to DO what people do who are living the life you want. It begins with being first. When what you do is a natural extension of who you are, life flows. Who do you need to BE to live the life you want? How tragic it would be to have your dream life show up and you aren't yet person enough to handle it!
Karen is author of The Sequoia Seed: Remembering the Truth of Who You Are, a great read for anyone who is seeking understanding or guidance, inspiration or clarity in his or her life. Waking Up, the free bi-monthly ezine, was created to help you activate your natural motivation to move beyond mere existence and to really LIVE your dreams. Contact by tel:509...
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The Speech That Never Was: This Is It
Posted: 25 May 2009 03:00 AM PDT
Something many of you will know about me by now is that I really try to make the most of life and take advantage of this opportunity I have on earth. Part of making the most of life, to me, is facing your fears and really going for what you want, even if it scares you. That is something I did around 6 months ago when I joined a public speaking club
A meeting at the club usually involves 4 people each giving an 8 minute speech and then 4 other members evaluating them. After that, everyone else who would like to speak is given a random topic which they have to speak about for 2 minutes.
Being quite new to the club I had yet to make a longer speech, but my chance came when I was asked to put together a talk for the next meeting. Originally, I had written a speech about making goals and being able to achieve them; something I like to think I’ve been successful at. Within a few days I had put the whole thing together and just needed to start practicing it.
Around four days before the event, I was putting the finishing touches to my presentation and recording my efforts. It was at this time that I received a phone call to let me know that my gran, who had been in hospital for a few weeks, had sadly passed away.
It was at that moment that I decided to change the topic of my speech, aptly entitled: This is it. The meeting where I was supposed to give my talk ended up being cancelled so I never had the chance to present it. Therefore I’ve decided to share the talk with you all in this blog post in the hope that each of you can take something from it.
I have modified the speech slightly as text for a speech is quite different to text for a reader, but the main messages should still come across clearly.
Without further ado, here is the speech just after I had explained about my choice of topic…
I didn’t want to speak about death for 8 minutes; instead, I want to focus on problems - the things that usually seem so small in times of serious matters.
In order to talk about problems effectively, I decided to look at the three phases of time that our perceived problems come in: the past, the future, and the present.
Something highly obvious, but often forgotten about the past is that it is nothing more than a memory in your imagination. You can only ‘relive’ the past by thinking about it; you can’t go there, you can’t change it, and it will always be as it is.
Yet, while the past is nothing more than part of our imagination, it still has a strong hold on people in this present moment.
First of all, people define themselves by their past. Someone might say: “people made fun of me at school so I must be a loser now” or “I’ve never had a boyfriend or girlfriend so why should I be able to get one now” or even “I’ve had no lucky breaks come my way so why would that change”. We use the past to create limiting beliefs thinking that we can’t do such and such now because we’ve never done it before, and so on.
Secondly, we hold on to problems of the past. Some people who have had a hard childhood never seem be able to forget about the struggle that they’ve went through and it makes them miserable. Even something more recent, like having an argument with a colleague a few days ago, can still bring us down in this moment. This happens simply because we’re thinking about it and those thoughts can bring the exact same emotions as the actual event.
Thinking about the past or letting the past control our present isn’t the only thing that holds people back. There’s also the future.
If the past is nothing more than a memory of what has happened, then the future is nothing more than some projected thought of what might or should happen.
There are two aspects to ‘future’ thinking that people allow to control them and create problems in their lives. The first is that we worry about a possible event. When I had finished my speech I was getting worried about the possible reactions and how well it would go. I was comfortable and in my home, with nothing bad going on, yet there I was creating negative future projections and letting them bring my mood down in that moment. I was getting stressed at nothing more than mind made projections.
Secondly, we hope for salvation in the future. We tell ourselves that the future will bring happiness and wealth and fulfilment or anything else we desire. We use the future as some kind of scapegoat. Thinking that as soon as a certain event happens that we can be at peace or start enjoying life and being happy. We spend this moment now waiting for good things to happen in some other moment.
If we cling to the problems of our past, and worry about what might be in the future, where do we find happiness and live problem free? That’s simple…this moment, right here, right now.
Before I get into that, I want to look at our tendency as humans to label and react to things. Without trying to cause too much controversy, my personal view is that every situation is completely neutral.
To help you understand that, let me ask you a question:
If a young girl gets hit by a car, is that positive, negative or neutral (neutral meaning it is what it is) ? The obvious response to that is that it’s negative, the girl should not get hit by the car, it just shouldn’t happen. Now what if the girl getting hit by a car allowed doctors to find a tumour that they would haven’t of otherwise found out about and managed to save her life. Is the car crash still negative, is it positive, or is it…what it is.
Regardless of your answers to that, what I’m getting at is that it’s completely up to you how you look at and react to things. You can see things negatively, which we tend to do, we can see things positively, or we can accept things as they are, and deal with the things we can deal with.
Even today, there are probably so many irrelevant little incidents that got each of us in a bad mood. The learner driver in front of you was going too slowly, your boss gave you a task to do that you didn’t like, your child made a mess when making breakfast and so on. We resist these things, we resent people and we constantly complain internally because we’ve already labelled the thing or person as ‘bad’.
Did you know, most car accidents aren’t caused by drivers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Most car accidents are caused by drivers in emotionally charged states. For example, their football team may have just lost, they might have had an argument with their partner or something else that gets their adrenaline pumping before stepping into a car. They can’t let go of what has happened and be in the moment and instead hold onto their problems.
It is this kind of holding on to the past which causes fatal accidents.
Instead of holding on to incidents and let them control you, try to be here in the moment, as often as possible. Take in this situation, this moment, right now. You’re safe, you’re probably indoors and there are no problems you can have right now. You might think you had one 2 minutes ago, or you might think something will come up in 10 minutes, but right now, there are no problems. (See post
What eastern philosophy and spiritual teachers have been trying to tell us for a long time is pretty simple: now is all there ever is. Now is the only constant, it is never not now. I have practically eliminated “problems” from my life by trying to live in the moment as often as possible and not letting my thoughts bring me down.
Instead of holding onto problems of the past, instead of disregarding this moment because you think happiness is found in some perfect future - come back to this moment. Take in your environment, be in it, soak it all up. You’ll be surprised when you find peace and happiness in the most simple of situations.
Just like with my gran, we never know when our time is up. Make the most of this opportunity that we call life: this is it.
| Written by Chuck Gallozzi |
Any Fool can Criticize, and Most Fools DoThe Harm We Do © Chuck Gallozzi |
AMSTERDAM (AFP) – Over-eating, not a lack of exercise, is to blame for the American obesity epidemic, a new study claimed Friday, warning that physical activity could not fully compensate for excess calories.
"There is no evidence that a marked reduction in physical activity has been a contributor to this epidemic in the United States," study leader Boyd Swinburn told AFP on the sidelines of an international obesity conference in Amsterdam, where the research was unveiled.
"The increase in energy intake... virtually explained all of the weight gain."
Swinburn, a professor at the health faculty of Australia's Deakin University, said American children had grown on average four kilogrammes (nine pounds) heavier over the past three decades with adults putting on an extra eight kgs (17 pounds).
The study calculated what Americans should weigh today based on their current, higher food intake, and comparing this to their actual weight.
If they weighed more than projected, this would suggest a drop in physical activity.
In fact, researchers found that American adults weighed less than could be expected from their diet, "which means that if anything over that period of time, the adults had been increasing their physical activity, not decreasing," said Swinburn.
Among children, the tests yielded a 100 percent match, leading researchers to conclude that changes in physical activity had had no impact whatsoever on America's children growing fatter.
The findings would "probably be similar" for other developed countries, Swinburn said.
For the US population to return to its leaner, 1970s self, children would have to cut their intake by about 350 calories a day -- equal to one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries, and adults by about 500 calories -- the equivalent of a Big Mac burger.
Alternatively, children would have to walk for an extra two-and-a-half hours a day, and adults for nearly two hours, said Swinburn.
"Getting everybody to walk an extra two hours a day is not really a feasible option for countering the epidemic," he said.
"We need to limit our expectations of what an increase in physical activity can achieve."
Swinburn stressed that the findings did not seek to negate the value of physical activity for weight control and overall health.
"But if we want to influence the underlying drivers (behind obesity), we have to have our eye much more on the energy intake side than on the physical activity side."
In short, Americans must eat less, he said.
The World Health Organisation estimates that in 2005, about 1.6 billion adults were overweight, of which at least 400 million were obese.
The conference was organised by the European Association for the Study of Obesity.
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Well, didn't we all grow up with being told to clean our plates or no dessert??? I still hear and see this cultural activity going on today. Children, usually, innately know when they are full and will stop. But those in authority will always override that behavior.
Parents, teachers, grandparents....your little kids know more than you about their own bodies. Feed them healthy foods and let them tell YOU when they are done and full.
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