By Shannon Cutts
Snowball, Animal Planet star. Photo courtesy of Irena Schulz and Bird Lovers Only (www.birdloversonly.org)
Outside of a few celebrities (Kate Winslet, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adele and Liv Tyler come to mind) who are adamant that they love their curves and plan to maintain them, finding visible role models who genuinely seem to like their bodies is an ongoing challenge.
Which is why sometimes I turn to non-humans for inspiration.
Take Snowball, for instance.
Talk about a positive body image mentor!
Snowball is a young sulfur crested cockatoo.
He was dropped off at the Bird Lovers Only bird shelter by his frustrated former owner, who couldn’t deal with the well-publized “terrible twos” that cockatoos and other large birds often go through.
But Snowball’s owner also left a DVD with the bird, and instructed shelter co-owners Charles & Irena Schulz to make sure to pop it in and watch what happened next.
What happened next was that the couple discovered that Snowball realllllllyyyyy likes the Backstreet Boys.
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By Shannon Cutts
Thom Rutledge may be best-known to the eating disorders world these days as Jenni Schaefer’s therapist, but Jenni is just one of literally hundreds of folks who credit Thom for life-saving guidance, mentoring, and support.
When I first published Beating Ana and launched MentorCONNECT, I was pretty starry-eyed around folks I considered to be “eating disorder celebrities.” So when I first started getting email from Thom himself, I nearly fell over.
But he liked what we were up to with MentorCONNECT, and proposed a collaboration. His idea involved “teleconferences,” which made technologically-challenged me feel a bit faint for other reasons. His part would be to lead them. My part would be to run the teleconferencing program.
Needless to say, it took awhile for us to get the thing up and running.
But to date, Thom has presented 9 amazing teleconferences for us, and the 10th is right around the corner on February 9th.
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By Shannon Cutts
Is your own body language comforting to you - or does it make you feel, well, all twisted up inside?
When I turned 40 (one year and one month ago pretty much today) Woman’s Day magazine just started arriving in my mailbox.
They knew.
In the mysterious ways of modern marketers, somehow they got an alert when another gal hit the big 4-0, and they were already prepared to deliver timely advice about reducing middle age pudge, covering up grey hairs (I’ve had that move mastered for years), menopause meds, and other helpful tips.
Most of it I don’t actually find that helpful….yet….some I find a bit scary.
And yet I keep reading each month, out of curiosity if nothing else about what the coming years may bring.
One article in January’s edition caught my particular interest – it was titled “Body Talk,” and the author, Annie Finnigan, interviewed several experts to find out how what we aren’t saying verbally often gets said anyway.
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By Shannon Cutts
If there were even a chance of loving yourself this much - or more - would you spend the time it takes to get to know you better?
You are you.
And I am me.
Sounds simplistic, right?
But how well do I really know who “me” is? For that matter, how well do you really know “you”?
Would we be able to pick ourselves out of a lineup? Sure – if we saw a picture. But what if the only thing we were given was a written description – our likes, dislikes, personality type, strengths, weaknesses, preferences…..would you know you? Would I know me?
Answering just for myself here, I am not sure.
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By Shannon Cutts
If you look in the mirror and see this face, then now is a great time to wait.
Years ago, my mentor, Lynn, told me, “if you are feeling anger, then it is not the right time to act.”
Lynn is still my mentor today, and she still tells me this from time to time.
I have also learned that it applies equally well in situations where I am feeling sadness or grief, anxiety or indecision, and, well, anything other than peace, basically.
Peace, Lynn has often explained and re-explained to me, is like finding true North on a compass, or the North Star in the midnight sky. It is always reliable. I can trust it. I can walk in that direction with confidence.
But anger might be pointing me South.
Sadness might ask me to go West.
And anxiety might have me heading off far to the East.
So if I don’t feel peace, it is always the right time to wait.
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By Shannon Cutts
From the front, that self-wall may look impenetrable. But with awareness comes opportunity....and the strength to break the wall down.
Not too long ago, I made a huge breakthrough in my self-work.
I had long been aware that there were certain walls – protective or otherwise – that I had through the years erected and even for a time maintained against others, be they situations, people, places, or even memories.
But it wasn’t until more recently that I realized I also had a wall up, and in place, against myself.
It started with my morning meditations.
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By Shannon Cutts
What is a preference?
What is a priority?
Common definitions would indicate that a preference is something we like more than something else, and a priority is something we think is more important than something else.
Already, it is easy to see that a preference and a priority are not always the same.
My preference may be to sleep in all day. But what will that choice do to my priorities?
Sometimes they are the same. It is great when this happens. For instance, my preference is to keep my body healthy. After 15 years battling an eating disorder, this is also my continual priority.
But other times, they are not the same. An example – my preference is to sleep in late every day. But my priority is to earn rent money, which sometimes means getting up early.
It can be problematic if we don’t learn to tell the difference between a preference and a priority.
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By Shannon Cutts
Just try explaining to this ivy why it needs to create a 5-year plan. It is far too busy just living each moment.
Learning to live in the moment is no skill any child, pet, or insect has to learn.
It is the only skill they possess – the only one they know is possible.
This is also why pets, children, houseplants, and houseflies make such valuable mentors. Because we so easily tend toward forgetting this, and they are experts at reminding us.
If we are paying attention.
Moments matter for so many reasons. They matter because, quite literally, they are the only “life” we truly have. The past moment – the future moment – one we have already relinquished, and the other is not yet ours.
At the risk of sounding too existential, this is the bald-faced, incontrovertible, conscious truth.
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By Shannon Cutts
Happy? Sad? Angry? All of the above? The art of emotional release can help.
If you are like most people (or at least like me) you probably struggle with certain emotions more than others.
For instance, with practice, I have gotten used to – habituated to, even – emotions like sadness and anxiety. But I still arm wrestle feelings of anger daily.
For me, anger is the no-no emotion.
For you, it might be grief. Or fear. Or even joy.
I have also noticed that I am actually kind of afraid of happiness feelings.
Happiness, identified and expressed, feels like a very concentrated emotional pill as compared with more familiar feelings of sadness and anxiety left over from more than 20 years of eating disorder recovery.
In other words, I am still getting used to happiness, whereas depression and fear have become old friends of sorts.
In this, my life coach and I have been working on what I like to call the art of emotional release. This technique is quite different from emotional clinging, emotional distancing, or simple disavowal of having emotions.
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By Shannon Cutts
The key to unlocking our right and ability to embrace wanting is to understand what holds us back.
About five months ago, I made one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made and hired a life coach.
My life coach, Teya, is part therapist, part friend, part mentor, part cheerleader, and part (of course) coach.
This week, she said something so remarkable – I mean, she does that every week, but this week in particular I was just amazed that I’d never picked up on the subtle dangers of “wanting” before now.
She said, and I quote, “It is vulnerable to want things.”
She was speaking to my oft-expressed fear of late that I am not sure what I want.
I am often quite sure of what I don’t want (noisy neighbors, bird poop on the shirt I had planned to wear out later, having to wake up early) but I almost never feel as sure about what I do want.
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