Tag Archives: Perfect

Being Perfectly You is Key to Getting the Body You Want

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Self Love

 

“I have to have a perfect body, or I won’t be beautiful.”

“I have to diet and exercise perfectly, or I’ve blown it.”

“I have to be perfect, or people won’t love me or I won’t’ be a success.”

Feeling like you have to be and do things perfectly or you are a “failure” is a common attribute of the women with whom I work.

Perfection is an expectation that can never be met. The stress of trying to fulfill this unmeetable expectation can be a serious blow to your wellness—and weight loss efforts.

If you think about it, life would actually get pretty boring if you were perfect.

You would never learn anything, get to challenge yourself or grow. It would be as if everything in the world were yellow. And while you may love yellow, you appreciate it so much more if there’s a little blue, pink, or green thrown in for some contrast.

Your body is your body. Its curves and shape are uniquely you. Its size and contours are different from everyone else on the planet. It is that uniqueness that makes you beautiful, not your conformity.

What is optimal for your body will be different from everyone else. While using another’s body to inspire you to meet your goals can be a useful tool, if you are comparing your body and finding fault or reason to criticize yourself, you are actually doing harm to you, your body, and are unknowingly sabotaging your weight-loss goals.

Seeing where you aren’t perfect is an opportunity.

Engaging in the process of figuring out what you do want, what you are doing right, determining what is optimal for you, and valuing how you are unique will help you harness the powers of the Universe to work for you, rather than keep you stuck in the rebound weight-gain cycle.

This is how you begin to sculpt and create the body—and life—you want. You reach for the body and life that is uniquely you.

This is where the fun is! This is having a life that is vibrant and fulfilling.

Let go of the need to be perfect. Let go of feeling like you should already be at your goal. Just jump in exactly where you are.

What is optimal for you? Who are you when you are at your optimal weight and are experiencing optimal wellness? How will that help you be more uniquely you?

Move towards that. Engage in that. Have fun doing that.

This is life! This is thriving! This is creating the body—and life—you really want.

Together we can do it!

Time is Running Out!

Join the the Love Your Way Slim Coaching Program today! 

This unique program transforms your mindset, integrates your core values and spiritual beliefs, provides exceptional support, and hones in on the most powerful actions you can take to make releasing the weight not only easy and satisfying—but fun! (Yes, it really is possible!)

FIND OUT MORE HERE

Program closes Saturday. It won’t open again until January 2014!

 

http://loveyourwayslim.com/coaching-program/

 

Woo Hoo! You Aren’t Perfect!

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Many women I work with are squeezed between feeling the need to be perfect and judging themselves harshly for not being perfect.

Wow it’s a painful place to be.

And so not necessary.

I love the Dan Millman quote:

“You began life with a natural, complete sense of worth. (Have you ever met an infant with self-worth issues?) But as you grow, you serve as your own judge, deducting points when you misunderstand the nature of living, and learning—when you forget you are a human-in-training and that making mistakes and having slips of integrity and mediocre moments are a part of life, not unforgivable sins.”

I would go further. Not only is being imperfect not an unforgivable sin, it’s vital to living a full, happy, and authentic life.

Often when I ask clients to list their gifts or positive attributes, they struggle or can’t do it. But ask them for self-criticism or the perceived judgments of others and they can give you a page.

From the time you were born, you begin trying to please many masters—parents, teachers, friends, society, God, etc., etc. This would be OK if they were asking the same thing from you, but the message is inconsistent. To please your parents you have to say and be one way. To please your teachers, you have to say and be another. Your friends yet another.

And people still don’t like you and criticize you. You begin to think, “Maybe if I contort myself this way or that way they will love me.” You begin striving to meet this ever-changing target of perfection that will make everyone else happy.

Is it any wonder that you can’t be perfect?

In the process of contorting yourself, you lose Who you are—what you actually enjoy, what you’re good at, what you love.

By trying to be perfect, you may stop at the first hint of criticism. If you do push forward, your self-imposed rigidity my suck all the fun out. Life becomes hard. More often then not, you give up on achieving your goals and do what’s easier–what you know you can do perfectly.

I’m pulling your mask away. I see you and you aren’t perfect. You aren’t hiding the fact that you aren’t perfect from anyone. And you are so loved and worthy just as you are. You don’t need to please anyone else. You don’t need to be anyone else. In fact, the world is hungry for the true you.

I see you for Who you truly are—absolutely and totally perfect in your imperfection.

How do you expect to expand, change, and evolve if you are already perfect? And you can’t help but expand, change, and evolve. It is boxing yourself in and trying to limit yourself to playing in the narrow lines of perfection that is at the heart of your pain and unhappiness.

Growth comes from playing, learning, trying, and being. So relax. Ease up on yourself—and others. Play more. Be willing to learn more. Be willing to try and have the results be less than perfect. Let go of doing more and focus on being more.

Can you feel the relief in that? Can you feel the path to joy in that? Can you see the way to being Who you truly are?

Together we can do it!

Wellness Tip of the Day

Aside

Wellness Tip of the Day: It’s not only OK not to be perfect, it’s important! Growth comes from playing, learning, trying, being. Relax. Ease up on yourself—and others.

Create A “No Regrets” Policy

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I haven’t been perfect this weekend. While I got all my workouts in, my eating has been a little on the high-calorie side, as is apt to happen when family gathers and we celebrate a birthday—in this instance, my husband’s.

In the past, a splurge like I experienced this weekend would have been enough to derail me. I used to suffer from a severe case of perfectionitis where if I didn’t do my diet and exercise perfectly, I would be so hard on myself that I would give up.

Fortunately, I now have a personal “No Regrets” policy. This gives me the ability to start each day with a fresh opportunity to do the very best I can, and to celebrate those actions that are moving me towards my goal.

Being more tolerant and supportive of myself has helped me lift the “all or nothing” requirement that I used to have for success.

This feeling that you have to do your diet and exercise program perfectly or you’ve “blown it” is very common amongst dieters and is one of the primary reasons that people fail to meet their weight-loss goals.

The good news is that you don’t have to be perfect. If you eat a cookie or two, it’s not the end of your diet. But if you give up then and down a pint of ice cream on top of it—well that’s going to be much harder to recover from and your progress for the week will likely be stymied. Too many weeks with no progress and the motivation to continue seeps away and dies.

If you slip, it’s much better to pick back up right where you are.

One way to do this is to let go of regrets. Those cookies might not have been on your eating plan, but hopefully you enjoyed it, and now it’s over and done. Focus on getting back on track with your next meal.

By creating a personal “No Regrets Policy,” you more easily and consistently move towards the best possible version of you.

What do you need to tell yourself to get back on track immediately after you have been less than perfect? What can you do to be more tolerant and supportive of yourself? What difference does that make in helping you meet your goals?

Together we can do it!

 

 

Let Go of Perfection

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Opps! I completely forgot to do my ab workout yesterday. It wasn’t until I was writing down my workout this morning that I wondered where abs fit in. Right! I was supposed to do it yesterday.

The good news? I do not have to be perfect to meet my goals for the Transformation Mastery Challenge I’m doing. In fact, this provides me with the opportunity to overcome obstacles and persevere.

But it wasn’t too many years ago, that had I slipped up like this, I might have given up—either working out altogether or just blowing off the rest of my workouts for the week.

My thinking may have been along the lines of, “Well I messed this week up. I’ll just have to start fresh on Monday.”

I’m not alone in having had that “All or nothing,” thinking. This is one of those thought patterns that trips people up again and again.

Typical “All or nothing” thinking includes:

  • I have to do my diet perfectly, or I’ve failed.
  • I have to do my exercise perfectly, or there’s no point in continuing.
  • I have to see weight loss every day, or there’s no way I’m going to meet my goals.
  • I know I have something coming up this week where I won’t be perfect, so I might as well not even try.

When you bring this kind of thinking out into the light-of-day, it’s a little easier to see how invalid it is. But as long as you leave your thoughts unexamined, you may struggle and not understand what’s getting in your way.

You can challenge this kind of inaccurate thinking with questions like:

  • ‘What evidence is there that this thought might not be true?’
  • “What is the effect of my believing that thought and what could be the effect of changing my thinking?”

You can also begin to shift—almost retrain—your thoughts.

Here’s an example:

What would happen if you shifted your thinking after missing a workout to something like, “Wow, I totally missed that. It’s over and done, and I’ll get back on track with my work out tomorrow, and I won’t have any excuses for not giving it my all.”

You can also ask yourself, “What would someone else say about what I did or how successful I am?”

What I am doing is focusing on all the things I did “right,” which included getting in a fabulous back and chest workout yesterday and pounding my jump-training workout this morning. My nutrition was also spot on yesterday, and I’m focused on eating healthy again today. I’m still going to get two ab workouts in this week and I am going to use those workouts as an opportunity to focus and bring as much intensity to them as I can.

As Bill Phillips always says, “Progress not perfection.”

You do not have to be perfect to meet your goals. What can you do to begin seeing every challenge as an opportunity to overcome obstacles and persevere?

Together, we can do it!

 

Photo by Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net