It makes me sad that so many women are at war with their body, and recently as I sat in a week-long meditation retreat, I realized how hard it is for many of us to be with ourselves.
In a retreat, life gets very simple – we lose all the activities that usually distract us from uncomfortable thoughts.
I don’t hate my body, but I can find plenty there and in my life to be critical of. At one point during the retreat, I got the idea that I should love myself more.
As I sat with this idea, it didn’t take long to realize that no way could I make myself love myself. It might happen on its own, but it I couldn’t force it.
Actually, just the idea of loving myself is a tough one. I can hear my Mom telling me to stop being so self centered. We have a lot of baggage tied up with self love. And yet, clearly, we are responsible for taking care of our own selves. No one else will (or should) do it for us.
So then, how to work with this if we can’t force love and it’s a little edgy anyway? What I found worked for me was to become kinder with myself. I could have compassion for all my ideas about what I and my life should or shouldn’t look like.
We can stop wounding ourselves – life does plenty of that without our help. We can put down our weapons and declare the war is over.
More, we can turn our attention to the things that we already appreciate. If we look for bad, we’ll find it. If we look for good, we’ll find it. So why not focus on what is good about us and our lives?
Even that doesn’t have to happen all at once. Maybe the most important thing any of us will do is to just decide to stop inflicting hurt: hurtful thoughts as well as actions.
Just that tiny shift can add up over time to a completely different experience in life. I’ve seen it in my clients. And I got a good reminder in my own experience.
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