There is No Secret
Years ago, when I was convinced that I needed to lose weight, I searched for the secret. The diet. The exercise. The shake. The detox. The thing that would help me whittle down my waist and finally have a flat stomach. The thing that would finally make me happy and popular and perfect.
When You Feel Terrible About Your Body
Write about feeling terrible about your body.
Respect your feelings. Release them. Write about why you feel terrible. Write about the sensations swirling through your body. Write about the thoughts you're having. Write about where your discomfort, your sadness, and your pain might originate. Get curious. Get curious like you're talking to a friend and trying to better understand what they're experiencing. Get curious without judging how you're feeling or what you're thinking.
Respect your feelings. Release them. Write about why you feel terrible. Write about the sensations swirling through your body. Write about the thoughts you're having. Write about where your discomfort, your sadness, and your pain might originate. Get curious. Get curious like you're talking to a friend and trying to better understand what they're experiencing. Get curious without judging how you're feeling or what you're thinking.
Why We Seek Self-Improvement, How to Love Ourselves, and So Much More: Q&A with Danielle LaPorte
On Wednesday, we talked about how seeking self-improvement can actually become self-destructive, a powerful insight that comes from Danielle LaPorte's powerful book White Hot Truth: Clarity for Keeping It Real on Your Spiritual Path—from One Seeker to Another.
Are You Seeking Self-Improvement at Your Own Expense?
Danielle LaPorte spent many years striving to improve herself, striving to grow spiritually. She’d seen a life coach, a creativity coach, a speaking coach and a business coach. She’d had astrology readings and tried hypnotherapy. She’d attended wellness workshops, subsisted on juice cleanses, taken various yoga classes, had support sessions with a shaman—and worked with other practitioners and spiritual teachers in her pursuit.
The Many Lies Your Inner Critic Tells You
In order to protect you, to shield you from harm, rejection, failure and anything else painful, your inner critic lies. It distorts, deceives, misleads, misrepresents and fabricates.
When You Hate Your Postpartum Body
Your body has birthed a baby, and all you see is a belly that resembles Jell-O, stretch marks that stretch all over your skin, hair that's dry and thinning, breasts that sag and droop. All you see is exhaustion in your eyes, the darkness, the bags clear-cut evidence.
A Body Image Reminder: Your Body is Incredible
In the midst of bashing our bodies, we forget just how astonishing they are. In the midst of condemning our weight, grimacing in the mirror, trying yet another diet, hating our thighs, yearning for different traits, we simply forget.
Sometimes, it helps to have a reminder.
Sometimes, it helps to have a reminder.
There Are No Shoulds in Self-Care
Some "self-care" activities or actions tend to get put on a pedestal. They're seen as virtuous, and we're thereby seen as virtuous for practicing them. Going to the gym. Taking a yoga class. Eating a salad. Meditating. Reading literature. Waking up at 5
Self-Care Varies Day to Day
A common definition of self-care is: engaging in activities that boost one's mental, physical and emotional well-being. It's also common for certain activities to be excluded from that definition---such as vegging out on the couch, and eating a slice of cake. Instead, people talk about "healthy eating" and exercise as self-care activities, while couch time and cake don't qualify.
What I’m Doing Instead of Worrying About Bikini Season
Around this time of the year, as temperatures rise, many of us start to panic. We start studying our bodies in the mirror. We start nitpicking and grabbing at our skin. We spend hours in fitting rooms without buying anything. We spend hours in our closets, flinging clothes, swimsuits, everything on the floor. We spend hours blaming our bodies. We yearn to go into hibernation until the fall. Sometimes, we cry.
