Would You Speak To someone Else Like That?

Join our group of fun, smart, real women as we laugh and learn together.  Our Brighten Your Light Sessions start on February 26th with a Healthy Living  Seminar. Susan will be teaching us about realistic and healthy changes we can make when cooking and shopping for ourselves and our families.  Check out the Brighten Your Light page http://lifeandfriendship.wordpress.com/upcoming-events-2/upcoming-events/  for all the info.

So, I was thinking about all the mean things most of us say to ourselves all the time.  You know, how you would put on a bikini and enjoy yourself at the beach if you weren’t so darn fat. How you would love to try… but you are too shy. They don’t even like you anyway, right? All of these mean hurtful things we say to ourselves, but would never dream of saying to another living soul.  I have  a dim recollection of some show I watched on t.v. ,(it might have been Ruby), with a therapist type talking to this poor woman about how she had to imagine herself as a child. The therapist said, “You would never stand by and allow people to say the awful things to a little child that you say to yourself all the time.  Protect your little inner child just as you would any child you might meet.” You have to protect yourself and speak to yourself as if you were still that child. We try so hard to build up our loved one’s  self-esteem. I tell my two kids that they have to be their own number one fan. I have to question is that what I am modeling for them?

As I talk to people about the concepts behind Life and Friendship and the Brighten Your Light seminars I hear over and over, “But I don’t have any passion. I don’t know what I would want to do. I am not that type of person. I would like to try…but I am not that confident, smart, strong.” What?!!! Here’s the truth ladies. Your are all of that and a bag of chips! Slow down, listen to what you love. Where are you pulled? I am not necessarily talking about a career change. It could be that you love walking with your earphones on and the music blasting. Make it a priority. It could be that you get really clear that the big Sunday family dinners are a great idea but too much of a burden. Release it and create the family time and closeness in a way that works for you. Maybe you are always having the same fight with your husband, boss, kid, whom ever. Look at what it would be like if you could react differently. Or what if you could not react, at all? Any changes you make to live your life in the way that works best for you, no matter how unbelievably terrifying that may be, is what this is all about. It is your life after all.

I have a poem By Suzanne-Strempek-Shea on my Inspration page and it gave me such comfort at a time when I was struggling with a lot of changes in my life. She wrote:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for

a hundred miles through the desert,

repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours,

and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles

of the rain are moving across the landscape,

over the prairies, and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese,

harsh and exciting- over and over

announcing your place

in the family of things.

You are enough. This bears repeating. You are enough. Yes, you! This is such a comfort and lifts a huge burden when you feel it. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Trust me, you can find this place. At the time I found this poem I had settled my soft animal body into Bikram yoga four times a week. It was one thing I knew I loved and made me feel good. It was enough for the rest of the world to move on around me while I sweated and stretched and breathed my way through those classes. “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.”

So maybe, right now, you don’t feel the passion. Maybe you are not the smartest, bravest, funniest, most outgoing person. That is not what is holding you back from having your life the way you want it to be. Your life is the way you want it. You have created it. You need to change what you want. You need to stop telling yourself you can’t and just do. Be kind, be loving, be supportive to yourself. Be your own biggest fan!

I am attaching a link to a great post on a blog called 12 months of creativity http://12monthscreativity.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/inspiration-surpassing-limits-achieving-goals/ . I love at the end of the post when she said her friend pushed himself to his limits only to find they were much further than he had imagined.