Love Your Story: Stories and discussions about personal growth, mindset and living with intention

Has your life turned out as you expected? Do you ever feel like things are totally out of your control? Are you overwhelmed, stuck and ready to get your life back?….so starts the paragraph on Dr. Brenda’s home page. And since that very first question she poses is the exact same question as the one I posed on my pre-dissertation research study, you can imagine that I wanted to hear what she had to say about “Has your life turned out as you expected.”

Brenda is the author of Time to  Forgive and Forget, a certified professional coach, and a qualified mediator. She is known for helping individuals and teams create their story and focus on what they want. There are no mistakes in her world; there are only MIS takes. This means we can learn forward and do another take achieving the results we desire.  Stay tuned for my interview with Dr. Brenda Kelleher-Flight and our discussion on how the stories inside our head are creating our reality and the people we attract, and her thoughts on the idea of Point of Poise.

For more information on Brenda Kelleher-Flight

www.gdpconsulting.ca; 

facebook.com/Brenda–Kelleher-Flight-GDP-Consulting-Inc-122455991132103/

Healing is a cyclical event. We don’t do it once. We do it over and over. As I ponder on this topic I think about all the people I have interviewed – people who have lost children to hiking accidents, car accidents, suicide. People who have lost spouses and parents to murder and suicide. A woman with an eating disorder and a man whose father tried to kill him as a child in order to prove himself a prophet in God’s eyes. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The stories are raw, powerful, and illustrate people who found ways to stand up, heal, and move on to make the world better, to make their own lives better, and to rise from the ashes of pain, loss, betrayal and self-loathing. Today’s conversation is about healing, because it’s a part of every story, and the alternative is to suffer.

The things we must heal from are myriad. What affects each of us and how it affects us is very personal–that personal hero’s journey. And the beauty of that is the utter brilliance of it.

WE EACH HAVE A PERSONAL JOURNEY THAT SPECIFICALLY PLAYS OUT ACCORDING TO THE THINGS WE INDIVIDUALLY NEED TO LEARN. I THINK THE STRONGEST HEROES HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE TOUGHEST JOURNEYS. So, if yours is feeling pretty beat up right now – take heart – and badass up! You’re one of the superheroes.

Oprah Winfrey said, “Like me, you might have experienced things that caused you to deem yourself unworthy. I know for sure that healing the wounds of the past is one of the biggest and most worthwhile challenges of life. It’s important to know when and how you were programmed, so you can change the program. And doing so is your responsibility, no one else’s. There is one irrefutable law of the universe: We are each responsible for our own life.”

Let me tell you a story. In 2016 when I started my emotional intelligence training I didn’t really know how to get past where I was. I felt stuck. I knew I didn’t trust men, but I wasn’t really sure how to get around that. Fact was fact. And then, thank God, I started a journey of healing. It involved some crying, some screaming, some vulnerable emotional exposure, it involved telling my stories and reframing them away from victimhood into learning. It involved people who guided me, mentors and heralds. It involved my shadow self and my hero self.

I arrived in Columbus, Ohio with my friend Anisa. My herald Sally had told me I needed to go to this conference, and being the ever so obedient friend we bought tickets and figured if it sucked we’d just go and have a great weekend in some place we’d never been. We got to our hotel room and the next three days pushed my buttons. One of the first exercises we did was to arbitrarily find a partner – a buddy, and sit across from them. You had to look them in the eyes. You didn’t have to say anything, in fact, you weren’t supposed to. We were instructed to simply maintain eye contact. This was someone I did not know, had never spoken to, and it was a man. As we sat across from one another staring into one another’s eyes and holding hands, tears started to roll down my cheeks. I was so embarrassed. There I was staring into the eyes of some man I didn’t know, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying.  Wow! I thought. I’m in for a ride. But, I really wanted to figure this out – figure out what was holding me back, figure out how to heal, so I kept at it. The leader of the workshop pissed me off because he was so arrogant and disrespectful to the students, but I stayed and bit my tongue because I wanted to move forward and instinctually I knew something was going to happen here. I didn’t know how this was going to work, or what was going to happen, but I knew I was where I needed to be. So, when the workshop leader tried to kick me out because my hand wasn’t raised high enough, I bit my tongue and raised my hand higher. My coach was incredibly tolerant, loving, but tough with me as I questioned everything, challenged everything, and cried more. This was the beginning. The beginning of cleaning house. The beginning of shaking out all the left over pieces that I hadn’t worked through.

I have a little plaque a friend gave me for Christmas this year. It shows a cute travel trailer and it says, “Sometimes your journey will take you off of your path. It’s all part of the same trip.”

When I think about the idea of each of us embarking on our own heroes journey, fraught with struggles and gifts just for us; when I picture that each of us have our own heralds put in our path to bring us the messages we need when we need them, and mentors to guide us and provide motivation and inspiration-gifts for our own personal journey; when I think of our own individual threshold guardians who challenge us with challenges that are specially made for us, to see how badly we want what we think we want; and the tricksters in our stories that bring energies of mischief and draw attention to imbalance – but exactly in the way we need it, well, the idea of the individualized heroes journey does a couple things for me: 1. It gives me hope. When I’m feeling like I have GOT to be off the path and wandering around lost on my heroes journey; when I feel like I’m stuck in a bog or the dragons are too fierce and completely unfair, or that things are NOT playing out in the right way, I come back to the idea that I’m exactly where I need to be, learning what I need to learn, and then the panic subsides. 2. It makes me excited. If this journey is going to play out exactly as I need it to, then I’m not alone, I’m guided, there is a purpose beyond my own doing and that makes me excited about what great adventure lies ahead. What will happen today? Who will I meet? What idea will come? What abundance will show up? 3. I get to have double appreciation for the people who come into my life and walk my path with me. They are my beloved tribe, or my teachers, or my mentors, or my heralds. They are a part of my divinely orchestrated story. How cool is that, and how cool are they? 4. The villains in my life become less scary, in a way. They become part of the story of learning, forgiveness, and healing. A part of my journey. A part of my story. And while I don’t like them, if I trust that they have purpose and then I seek to find the meaning, they end up playing a role that is incalculably valuable.

The trip to Ohio for me was just the start to my healing journey, but it was PART of my journey, a really important part of my journey, and what I learned was that we don’t have to stay stuck. Healing isn’t just dealing with what we’ve been dealt. Healing is so much more.

So, how do we heal? In my own life, I have sought healing over and over. Every time my heart was broken, during my marriages there were horrible things to try and survive and heal from. When I do stupid things or hurt other people I often feel regret and pain that I have to work through. When mean people hurt me sometimes it takes ages to dare to engage with people again. I’ve tried everything from avoidance, to prayer, to hiding, to running off, to service, to reading voraciously, to getting a rebound boyfriend, etc. etc. It’s a process…but the most powerful ways of healing I have found have been two specific processes. 1. I always turn to God. In the scriptures, Jesus is repeatedly referred to as the master healer, as the Great Physician. Does this mean that when we ask that everything will be put back as it was? Dr. Wendy Ulrich distinguishes healing from cure. She says, “Let me first distinguish between healing from cure. Cure returns us to our previous state of wellness, which is usually what we long for. But the scriptures never speak of the gift of cure. They speak of the gift of healing. Healing is a different process from cure. Healing involves a spiritual and emotional reweaving of our life story to incorporate, not merely remove, our injuries. It involves growth and personal change, maturation into a new state of deeper trust in God despite, no in the absence of, suffering.”

There have been times when the pain so wracked my body that I fell to my knees in tears begging for it to stop, and it did. Just like that. More than once it’s been taken from me. These times are the miracles and mercies of God, there is no question in my mind about that, for no one else could have done it. There are also processes we must go through. God removing the pain from me momentarily didn’t change the situation or what I would have to deal with. It didn’t take away the resulting baggage necessarily.  It just gave me a reprieve for the moment so I could stand back up and continue on the journey. But inevitably, in the end, I have been brought to a place of the spiritual and emotional reweaving of my life story that allows me to include a level of empathy, understanding, to refrain from judgment, and an overall comprehension of the human experience that I most certainly did not have before my suffering. This was gained with time and with processes and paths of healing that I have no doubt that He put before me. Which brings me to number 2. This is what I call the reframing process. We’ve talked about this before because it’s my patented –okay I really didn’t patent it—but it’s my 5-Step Process for being able to reframe our past stories that we need to heal from so we can move on down our path and get on with our journey. This 5-step process is covered in detail in episodes 46-50. I created this process by taking my experiences with healing and packaging it for others to start on their healing process.

Hippocrates said, “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” Tools and workshops, my 5-step process, professional counseling, etc. these are the opportunity.

I posted a question on Facebook and asked my friends what they do to heal. I got a tremendous response and it varied from journaling to drinking, to be forgiving of myself and of others, allow yourself to grieve, acknowledge your higher power and on and on. I think I was simply most impressed by how thoroughly people had created ways to heal. It was beautiful, detailed, thorough.

The creation of the Love Your Story movement started from a place of healing. It was about me healing and learning to love my story and wanting to help other people do the same thing. Not to take the place of Christ as the master healer, of course, but as tangible steps I a mortal world to help us process our grief, our discomfort, our shame, our regrets, our own inevitable human messiness.

To love ourselves fully we must come to love and accept our stories. Finding their beauty and meaning, despite, and even because of, the valleys of darkness we have walked through. This is key to being whole. Love your story. Love yourself.

After our wounds have sat with us for awhile, not while they are raw, but after time has dulled the terrible pains, there comes a space of needing to make peace with the experience. Let me share these 5 steps to reframe and heal from our sacred and terrible places. That way we aren’t just talking in generalized terms about healing, but I’m actually giving you actionable steps that you can take.

Most life stories turn out drastically different than we plan for or expect. That is the nature of the adventure of life. No one plans for heartbreak, disease, loss, abuse and the cadre of other experiences that take us off the course we have planned for ourselves and our happily-ever-afters. In my research, only 1 out of 20 people had lives that turned out as they thought they would. The first key to loving your story is to truly accept that you are not the only one. You’re not alone in the unexpected trajectory of life; your path has been and will be full of both the good and the bad. That’s how it is for everyone and you’re no different. Even the people who look like they have it all, don’t. Life is messy and that’s okay. Accept it. Accept yourself. Accept your own pain, your own experiences, your losses and your beautiful self.  It’s our starting point.

Debbie Ford said, “The greatest act of courage is to be and own all that you are. Without apology, without excuses, and without one’s masks to cover the truth of who you really are.”

There’s nothing that we can do to change the past. We get to sift out the gold from the dross and then move forward in full acceptance. Because we can change the future.

Shame causes us to hide, and as we hide our stories, the characters loom larger and uglier in the dark. When we tell our stories we rip away the curtains covering the events, we claim them as they are, and we let the light shine on the reality. When we do this we often find others who have similar experiences, or we simply own them and their power fades in the light. What was once a looming dragon is unveiled to be less sinister as we claim it, say it out loud, and feel the emotion it creates. Telling the story is the beginning of healing.

Telling your story can mean different things. I’m not suggesting posting it to Facebook is a good idea. What I mean is say it out loud in a safe place. This may be a professional, a friend, a stranger, a life coach.

Tell the story. Feel the emotion. Let it be what it is, but say it out loud.

In Ohio I told stories I’d said out loud to very few people. It was terrifying. If was freeing. It was paramount to being able to accept them. But the safe place to do this is in a place of non-judgement. With someone who can let you tell the story and simply let it be what it is.

When events happen in our lives, caused by either ourselves or others, there is always something that can be learned. This might be the most important step in the process.

For me the culminating purpose or meaning that I identified for my story as a whole was simply that all the things I had gone through – the heart break, the betrayal, the guilt, the fear, the abuse, the abandonment, the struggles of a single mother, the loneliness, led me to a place of greater understanding, empathy, and broader experience that allows me to connect with a larger range of people. Finding meaning for me was not about excusing anyone, not even myself, it was simply acknowledging the greater take-away and what that meant to my personal development, my personal goals, and my acceptance of my own story –my own life path, even the parts, maybe especially the parts I did not control.

Your meaning will be very personal to you, but when you can find meaning to your suffering, it ceases to be just suffering. It begins to take on the expanded life that allows for the reframe.

When Viktor Frankle helped his patient realize that his wife’s death meant she did not have to suffer without him as she would have if he had died first, it gave his suffering meaning.

When Annadel Lemon, in episode 65, created a platform to help others forgive and heal from their life tragedies it gave meaning to her father’s murder of her mother and his subsequent suicide, because she created something from the ashes of her broken family.

When Tammy Johnson, in episode 60, focused on her son’s death as a release from his depression and struggle rather than the deep loss of this 16 year-old high school student, she created meaning that allows her to find peace.

What meaning do your sacred wounds hold?

We each grow up with a set up lenses we look through to see and interpret events in our lives. These lenses include our religion, our gender, our socio-economic standing, our education, our culture, our race, our families, our sexual experience, what side of the tracks we live on, etc.  No set of these is the exact same for any one person. These lenses, stacked one on top of the other, give us our views of the world – like a set of glasses with a stack of a dozen lenses. Once we come to understand this, it is easy to see how others around us can interpret life events differently than we do. Taking off your glasses, and making an attempt to look through another set of lenses can lead to an increased understanding and empathy for others and their part in your story.

Consider these questions:

While not all of these questions may apply to you and your story, it is a place to start in broadening perspective as you prepare to reframe.

With these new perspectives, how does your story change? How do you see it differently? What new insights help you see it differently?

Reframing is often not a one-person exercise. We are quite entrenched in the perspectives of our own stories, so if you need help to see different angles and perceptions of the event, find someone to work with you – a therapist, a life coach, a friend, a loved one. Someone that is detached enough from your story to be honest with you. Someone who will be able to suggest new perspectives, and honest enough to do so will be important.

Retell the story from a different perspective, with a broadened understanding. How does the story change?

Oprah Winfrey said, “Every person carries her own story of hope and sorrow, victory and loss, redemption, joy and light. Everyone has had her share of life lessons. How well you learn from them is up to you. When you choose to see the world as a classroom, you understand that all experiences are here to teach you something about yourself. And that your life’s journey is about becoming more of who you are. Another miracle: We all get to share in the journey. The hardest experiences are often the ones that teach us the most. Whenever trouble comes my way I try to ask myself: “What is this really about, and what am I supposed to learn from it?” Only when I perceive what the real lesson is can I make the best decision and grow from the experience. After everything that’s happened to me in all my years on this earth, what I’m most proud of is that I remain open to evolving. I know that every physical encounter has a metaphysical meaning. And I’m open to seeing it all.”

The miracle of healing- of transforming our darkest places into such things as peace, acceptance, increased light, understanding, patience, empathy, and love—is always a process. It is a process guided and supported by God who always seeks to heal us, to love us, to hold our hand as we grow. It is a process of chosen opportunity, as Hippocrates said. It is a process of time, forgiveness, gentleness with ourselves and tremendous growth.

Talie Wehr, a life coach who lives in Ohio, shared with me some of the things she does to heal. She said, “I connect to the support around me.  I make a gratitude list. Journal. Self-care. Create healthy routines or get super consistent with the ones that I already have. I let God comfort me. Be gentle with myself. Write a letter of forgiveness even if I don’t send it. Acknowledge that God is the judge, not me (seeing myself actually get down from the judge’s bench, and give the gavel to God helps me let go and forgive) I do things creatively that I deeply enjoy (dance, paint, cook, design, hike). I be a...

Episode 83 Interview Wendy Garrett – Life is Tough, but I’m Tougher

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast,  episode 83 where I’m talking with Wendy Garrett.

When one has a paralyzed limb it’s unlikely that you’ll see them running, but it’s even less likely that you’ll see them running a marathon, but even less likely than that is that they will be competing in the major world marathons, but that’s the story we get to hear today. Stay tuned to find out about Wendy’s accident, the long process to discovering why she couldn’t use her leg, and the way it has become possible for her to get the support she needs to walk and run on her own.

From the age of 6 to her retirement at age 23 Wendy Garrett was a competitive gymnast. She attended Utah State University where she got her degree in Sports and Exercise Science, and after her retirement from gymnastics, she began running as a way to stay active. For her, this was ½ marathon and marathons and she became a full-time gymnastics coach which took her to San Diego, to Austin, Texas, and to beautiful Bermuda. This was where the motor accident happened that took the use of her left leg.

Listen to the podcast to hear Wendy tell her story about the accident, how she was finally diagnosed, and the way she found herself living her dream of running six world major marathons and traveling around the world.

She discusses having patience for God’s timing and how he can create for us something that is more beautiful than what we can create for ourselves.

To follow her: Instagram: wendygbird22

Hearing From Those Inside the 21-Day Challenge

The 21-Day Challenge launched in January and I wanted to give you a peek into what the challenge has been creating for those who have jumped on the bandwagon and accepted the challenge.

Today’s episode contains stories from four of the 21-Day Challenge participants so you can hear about some of the challenges, you can hear what the participants think of the challenges, and you can get a feel for the type of experiences being generated. I hope you’ll enjoy the stories they shared…I know I did.

And I’d love to have you join us on the inside and start creating these powerful experiences in your own life. Join the 21-Day Challenge by going to the website and signing up:

www.loveyourstorypodcast.com

Fantastic bargain at only $39 and worth so much more! Create possibility, connection, and peace in your own life story!

See you on the inside….

Thanks to all participants who shared their experiences.

Today I’m sitting at Roots Tech, the genealogy tradeshow at the Salt Palace in the capital of Utah, Salt Lake City. Dan Debenham, the host of the popular and highly acclaimed reality TV show Relative Race, and I, are sitting inside a bright lime green car, used by one of the teams in the reality show. We are sitting in here as a type of sound booth, so we can talk about the show, get the stories of the family members found, of the season highlights, and hear about people finding the characters in their stories that they didn’t even know were a part of their stories.

Tune in to this week’s podcast for our discussion and see the links below to watch past episodes or follow Relative Race.

@RelativeRace

https://www.byutv.org/relativerace

https://www.byutv.org/player/d294ba93-f5d4-4420-8953-77d974e34470/relative-race-season-3-episode-1

https://www.byutv.org/relativerace

Interview with Diane Butterfield – Part 2

You Can’t Choose What Happens to You, But You Can Choose How You Respond

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. Today is episode 80, which ends a 2-part series of interviews with Diane Butterfield. I’ve given this story 2 episodes because it’s long, it’s intense, and around every corner, there is another twist to the plot, another funeral, another dragon to be slain. If you’ve ever thought life was not fair, well…you’re in good company with today’s interviewee… If you’re just joining us, go back and listen to episode 79 first so you can get the first part of the story.

On her fridge, there’s a sign that says, “Fair is something you go to  in the fall.”  But one thing Diane is clear about is that while she is not in charge of what happens to her she is totally in charge of how she gets to act and react. In today’s episode we deal with suicide and finding your way forward when you find half your family in the cemetary. Stayed tuned for the rest of the story.

Tune into this series for her story of infertility, job loss, tragic car accidents and the loss of her children and her husband. But you’ll also hear about tender mercies, miracles, hope and perseverance that inspires.

Interview with Diane Butterfield – Part 1

You Can’t Choose What Happens to You, But You Can Choose How You Respond

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. Today is episode 79, which starts a 2-part series of interviews with Diane Butterfield. I’ve given this story 2 episodes because it’s long, it’s intense, and around every corner, there is another twist to the plot, another funeral, another dragon to be slain. If you’ve ever thought life was not fair, well…you’re in good company with today’s interviewee…

On her fridge, there’s a sign that says, “Fair is something you go to  in the fall.”  But one thing Diane is clear about is that while she is not in charge of what happens to her she is totally in charge of how she gets to act and react. Stayed tuned for the story.

Tune into the podcast for her story of infertility, job loss, tragic car accidents and the loss of her children. But you’ll also hear about tender mercies and perseverance that inspires.

Episode 78: Interview with Ganel-Lyn Condie

One of the things that I believe that we run up against in this day in age is the issue of self-condemnation, comparison, expectations,  – we live in a cultural space of doing it all; a social media space of seeing it all – all the great vacations, all the great relationship tributes, all the perfectly prepared meals and nicely decorated homes, the business accolades of associates and friends, the award banquets and the celebrations – all wonderful things, but of course, only part of the story. We should earn good money, we should be good parents, we should create good in the world by starting a non-profit that will save the starving orphans in Africa and stop the sex trade. And, don’t forget, you should look hip, thin, and extremely put together while doing it. There are moral and ethical realms that we should be topping out on, and of course, everyone else seems to be pulling it off in a sense of knowing and purpose.

I’m always talking about how life is Messy – I have a whole podcast episode on this – episode 8 – Life is Messy and that’s Okay; so when I hear speakers or read books with the message that WE ARE ALREADY OKAY AND DOING GREAT, when I find messages that allow for our realness and our learning and our self-acceptance and self-love as our story unfolds it strikes a cord. It feels good. I eat it up.

Ganel-Lyn Condie has a talk out on CD called You Are Already Walking on Water, and a new book coming out called You Are More Than Enough, if that’s all I knew about Ganel-Lyn I’d definitely want to talk to her, but she was also the Managing Editor at Wasatch Woman magazine when I wrote for them,  so we’ve got some background. I’ll let Ganel-Lyn tell you how she got from there to being the author of 7 books, becoming a popular motivational speaker known for inspiring others with her unique honesty, authenticity and spirit,.and we’ll get into a discussion on TIMING, on KNOWING YOU ARE ENOUGH, and ultimately on TRUSTING THE PROCESS.

Tune in to my interview with Ganel-Lyn.

Find her work and more information on her on the following links:

www.ganellyn.com

https://www.facebook.com/GanelLyn/

Interview with Mark Asquith – Origin Stories: The past defining the future

Every story has a life, and every life has a story.  Today on the Love Your Story podcast I bring to you Mark Asquith, from England, successful entrepreneur also known as the Hot Dog kid. Why do I bring this up – the incident with the hot dog? Because it’s a catalytic story in Mark’s life that made such an impact that over 20 years later it still helps him define what he wants, who he is, and who he isn’t. Stay tuned for my interview with Mark and find out how a sausage can shape your personal brand.

Mark Asquith, owner of Excellence Expected, Podcast Websites, and the 7-Minute Mentor podcast, is here today to share HIS story. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll let him tell it. From formative grade school experiences to successful business man and international speaker, I’ve asked Mark to share his story with my audience because it’s a prime example of the impact story can have in defining who we become and how we go about creating our lives.

Tune in to the podcast for Mark’s story.

Check him out at:

excellence-expected.com

podcastwebsites.com

Twitter: @Mrasquith

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mrasquith

LinkedIn: Mark Asquith

Instagram: mrasquith

Body Talk – Stories from the Inner Critic

Looking in the mirror has for many, become one of the most uncomfortable things we do. Uncomfortable because the minute we do the inner critic hammers away. It’s universal. You’re not alone. Criticizing the physical form we each inhabit is a rampant and pervasive story no matter where you live or who you are. Keep listening for a discussion on body talk, recrafting body stories, and why we’re all in this together.

Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Story power serves you best when you know how to use it.

Now, I love my body – it’s taken me up mountains, down mountains, across lakes, across deserts, down canyons, across dance floors, into incredible intimacy, and anywhere I directed it to go. It’s strong and healthy and with the exception of accidents that left me broken, it always has been strong and healthy. I’ve been blessed beyond measure. I’ve been able to see the world, loved ones, trees, scenic views and blooming flowers in all their colors, sunsets and sunrises, the depth in another person’s eyes, and all the amazing things we take for granted every day. I’ve been able to hug people I care about. I’ve been able to feel the music and let my body respond, I’ve been able to hear people express ideas, teach, complain. I’ve heard dogs bark, music play. I’ve been able to taste and enjoy delicious foods, and smell pine needles and Christmas candles, cookies and a steak on the BBQ. Confession: There have been times when I’ve been down enough that the idea of leaving this life was something I toyed with. But during one of those times of considering the viability of living, I realized that if I left I’d have to leave my body behind and I couldn’t bear to do that.

Now, that being said, I have a nice little entourage of body critiques that play over and over when I’m around a mirror. Lots of them have to do with aging, there’s one about weight, that my eyes are beady, or my forehead is too big, or my nose is too long, or … a bunch of stuff that I get to learn how to recognize as body assault chatter, and then remember that it’s the love and energy that we put out into the world, not the details of our wonderful bodies that determine our beauty and attractive natures.

One of the difficulties of changing our body-image mindsets is that living in a culture of body perfection expectation there will always be negative feedback – real or felt that comes at us. We have to become so full of acceptance and love of our own bodies that the negative societal feedback or expectation that gets flung around has less chance of sticking. I KNOW. Easier said than done, but we are discussing the whole picture here. Let me share a personal story about negative body image feedback.

When I was in 7th grade, a very formative age of social awareness and self-awareness, I had a geography teacher who thought he was a funny fellow and liked to tease the girls in the class that were his class favorites. He was the coach for the boys’ basketball team, and my friend and I were starters on the girls’ basketball team, so we often received the brunt of his jokes. He teased us daily, but one day, in front of all our peers, he told us we had elephant noses. He thought that was awesome fun, and proceeded to throw that out. “Hey elephant nose,” he’d yell across the classroom when he wanted our attention. We were little girls who hadn’t grown into all our features, but having an adult, in front of all the peers for whom we hoped to be extremely cool, disparage how we looked was embarrassing. Humiliating, really. I’ve never forgotten it. We’ve all probably got a similar story of someone in our lives mocking or finding fault with something about the way we look. Too short, too fat, too skinny, too …people can often are very cruel to one another. And then you also have the movies and the magazines that show only the glamorous and set unrealistic photoshopped expectations. Body shaming is maybe one of the toughest and most pervasive of modern challenges because it attacks are very being, which quickly translates into self-worth, self-love, and how we interact with those around us. It’s a killer.

The relationships we have with our bodies are individual. Different for everyone, very personal. But this discussion, about body stories, is being opened today because we have been given a glorious gift. We have been given bodies that serve us and provide a vehicle for our spirits to experience incredible things, and yet we attack our selves constantly with complaints, comparisons, and criticisms instead of love.

First, let’s talk about some ideas of why that might be, then we’ll talk about ways to start seeing things – start seeing ourselves – differently.

Hal and Sidra Stone wrote a book called Embracing Your Inner Critic. Both clinical psychologists, they created the “Voice Dialogue” process, a therapy that gives a platform to the inner critic to talk out loud, bluntly, fiercely, and then they help their clients with tools that can transform it into an ally. Through their work, they have spoken with thousands of inner critics over the past 15 years and one of the universal things the inner critic criticizes – no matter the country, gender, age, race, you name it…is the body.  In their book, they said, “The critique of the physical body is so all-pervasive, so powerful, and exerts such a negative and destructive influence on people’s lives that we want to devote a chapter specifically to this area…”

They talk about how the inner critic lives in mirrors, it attacks when we are shopping and trying on clothes. People say “I don’t like the shape of my face, or my hips are too big, or my neck is too short or my hair just lies there like a wet dishrag.” My toes are crooked, or my boobs are too small, or too big, or too flabby, or …

I’d like to point out a couple ideas – open some conversation here.

These judgments on ourselves begin to accumulate as criticisms, judgments, and cultural expectations are recognized. Then the inner critic or Satan or some misguided psychological protective device – whichever you think it is — have a heyday! It has been given all kinds of things to start throwing at us. The more we are given “supposed tos” the more fodder the critic has to throw at us. It’s a dangerous business, especially when you are unaware that it’s a critical construct, not a fact. Especially when those criticisms are believed, fostered, propagated and habitual neural pathways of self loathing are created. These attacks are particularly effective at incapacitating us because it is an attack on the very medium through which we interact with the world – our bodies. If we feel constant disgust or conflict about our physical appearance then already it is stopping us from living fully, engaging fully with others; and our self-consciousness stops us from experiencing the life we could have if we weren’t playing small in an attempt not to draw attention to what we feel insecure about. Have you ever lost a relationship because you were too self-conscious to allow it? Have you ever destroyed a relationship because you were too self-conscious and pulled back? The other day my teenage son confided that he’d felt so insecure all week because his face had broken out in acne and so he dreaded going to school and when he was there he held back from his friends and left their outings early because he was mortified about how he felt about the way he looked. Well, the result was that his girlfriend and he started hitting a rough patch because he wasn’t engaged and fun and all the usual things he is. He wasn’t himself because he was self-conscious over the way he looked. Let me know note here that it wasn’t that bad. His story about his acne was far more serious than the acne. But often times the thing we are most trying to avoid—losing love and acceptance from our peers—because of an internal story regarding some physical insecurity, actually creates the thing we are trying to avoid when those around us, or our loved one or friend couldn’t have cared less about it. Don’t be your own worst enemy.

I had an interesting experience at one of the weekend coaching retreats I attended a few years back – this weekend was a weekend out in the woods, but we were interacting with people in which we wanted to look our best and there was a lot of vulnerability going on, and in my book it’s always best to feel comfortable with how you look when you are making yourself emotionally and mentally vulnerable. Well, once I got there I realized I hadn’t brought the things I needed to do my hair. No one else had the right size curling iron, I was stuck with really having nothing to work with on this front. I was not happy about it, who likes to look bedraggled? Well it was SOOO not ideal and I was very disappointed, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so I made a conscious decision to not be self-conscious – to not focus on myself. I simply would banish any thoughts of my own looks and focus on others and being present to the work we were doing. Well, I did it. There were times I actively had to redirect my focus, but I did it and two interesting things happened.

No matter how we look, even the most “beautiful” people have these critical voices. And no matter how many “imperfections” we might fix, there will always be another way that we fall short of some culturally created expectation that erroneously has created some meter for measuring the physical ideal and what gets equated as being worthy of love, acceptance, and success. Even if someone is perfectly satisfied with their appearance at age 20, age will eventually catch up with them and generate discontent. Everyone is going to have to face this particular story and decide how they are going to handle it.

Let me also point out a fact about cultural body-image expectations. In the middle ages, the women who were considered most beautiful were those who were plump, well rounded, curvaceous. You can see this in the paintings and the sculptures. This was the preferred body form because to be fat meant that you were well-to-do, you could afford food. You were of the desired class. In the 1920’s the rage was that all the prettiest women were flappers, like Twiggy the model. Very thin, very flat chested, very boy-like. Twiggy was given her name because she looked like a stick. Depending upon when you were born, even where you were born, the beauty gauge was and is different. I have a friend who points out that if she were born in the middle ages she would have been a goddess. She focuses on her beauty, not on criticisms or self-consciousness.

My friend Liz who is doing amazing body-love work around her weight said, “I think the trick is finding some way to be at peace with our physical selves regardless of how acceptable or well matched we are to whatever a person’s societal idea is. That way we can embrace physical imperfections and the inevitable changes that come with age as simply another part of ourselves that we appreciate, admire and love. We can appreciate our bodies as a magnificent or imperfect extension of our best inner selves. Now, of course, this is much easier said than done, in large part because of those internal insecurities we’ve grappled with our whole lives, and in part, because external forces are constantly reinforcing unhealthy expectations. But I think the secret to overcoming the influence of external negativity and expectation is learning to manage and refute unhealthy internal thoughts or stories, from that critical voice.” She goes on to point out that when we get or create negative feedback about ourselves and we hear them day after day, year after year they cause deep and defining damage.

In Oprah Winfrey’s book What I Know For Sure,  she has a chapter on her experience with body hate and love. Tune in to the audio for my reading of her thoughts

So what is the secret to being at peace with ourselves as we are?

The truth is that that is going to be an individual journey for each of us. I could not guarantee one method that would solve all the body shame in the world, but let’s start with one of the biggies – the most powerful: the stories we tell ourselves determine how we feel about ourselves. Be careful with the stories and complaints you allow that inner critic to play on rewind. Like any reprogramming of our internal stories, we must first become aware that the long-held belief that you see as fact, that negative criticism you have about your body can be seen in a different way: being short doesn’t have to mean you are less, being fat isn’t a moral failure, having a long neck can be considered an asset.  What if you accept that the social stereotypes are NOT a fact? No cultural declaration of beauty has anything to do with fact.  While you may not be able to change a cultural view, you can certainly change your own acceptance and view of yourself and find your own peace.  Being open to reframing those internal stories means that as you are aware of the biting comments as they assault you, you replace them with new stories that serve and celebrate you. Stories of acceptance. “I am beautiful just the way I am.” “I love and accept myself and embrace my personal beauty.”  “I release my self-judgments and replace them with loving appreciation.” “Thank you body for taking me where I want to go; for helping me to experience life.” “I grow more and more beautiful every day.”  With this repetition, your views and acceptance levels shift. They really do, but it takes time. For me it also helps to realize that beauty is so individual – I don’t mean to be rude, but most people aren’t that good looking anyway. We’re all just a mix of features and we are going to connect with people of all shapes and sizes differently. Why feel bad about who we are, or make others feel bad about who they are. Most people are just pretty average looking and the thing that really sets us apart in the most meaningful way is the way we carry ourselves, our spirit and energy  – I truly believe these create the real beauty in a person. You’ve seen it – when someone carries themselves with confidence and pride, when they are focused on others and filled with joy rather than self-consciousness – they emanate a spirit and energy that attracts others, that makes you want to be around them.

Recognizing and giving credence to these facts are the basis for a foundation of shifting. Recognizing and allowing for our self-worth and self-love beyond pervasive and dangerous weavings of a destructive cultural construct is the first step to self-acceptance.

My friend Liz, who has felt the social and cultural judgments about her weight since she was young said,  “It’s not intuitive for a lot of people, and it comes easily to no one to make these adjustments in self-judgment. Up until very recently the idea of accepting my body as it is, rather than holding on hope I could change it, felt impossible. Blasphemous. Radical. It made me angry because the very suggestion seemed to imply a failing of moral and emotional strength. An unforgivable physical shame. It implied that I could never ever be hopeful or beautiful again. That my life would never really start. Which isn’t true, but to understand that, I had to read and read and read content in which really smart women insisted, ‘You’re fine the way you are. The majority of society may never see you that way, so you need to let that go. To let go of a lifetime’s worth of negative feedback. To love yourself. And when you really manage to do that, it’s gonna be enough. You’ll find that your own good opinion is good opinion enough.’ Loving ourselves means truly, deeply, letting go of what society thinks of us. So long as our worth is tied to their perceptions and opinions, we will ALWAYS be found wanting.”

I love both Liz’s declaration, as well as Oprah’s – we must make a loving and grateful peace with our bodies. We must love and cherish the gift they are – regardless of any message otherwise from any source. Always return to gratitude that you have a body and that it allows you to jump and touch, smell and see, love and dance. Honor your body by caring for it and treating it with respect. Lindy West, author of the book Shrill said, “Loving yourself is not antithetical to health, it is intrinsic to health. You can’t take good care of a thing you hate.”

Your challenge for this week is to start to notice the complaints and criticisms – the inner stories about...