Category Archives: Lifestyle

Change of Venue

If the daily humdrum of your life is starting to get to you, may I recommend a change of venue? I’ve had the good fortune to spend the last several days in Miami while my husband attends a conference for work. Tagging along has given me the chance to work in very different surroundings (that picture is today’s!) and it’s been positively inspiring. I’ve had bigger ideas than usual and more of them…and it’s no coincidence. You don’t have to go to the beach to accomplish this (though it doesn’t hurt!); you may have glorious spaces right under your nose that you’ve overlooked. All you need to gain some freedom is to consciously take yourself off autopilot and open your eyes!

The beauty of living and working in 2012 is that you can do it anywhere. Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves that we can take advantage of that freedom and flexibility to make our work lives even better. And if your work life involves scheduling your children’s camps and making grocery lists and planning home improvements, it’s still your work. There’s no rule that you need to be chained to a desk to do it.

Need some inspiration? Try one of these…

1- Poolside, even at your neighborhood pool! Go early before the crowd arrives and catch few hours of inspired work time

2- A table at your favorite cafe

3 – A different room in your own house – you’d be surprised by how different things look just from a new seat!

4 – A well-kept, fragrant garden with a wrought iron table

5- A corner table in a new coffeeshop in a different part of town

6 –  A picnic table at the park

7 -The lobby of a swanky hotel

8 – The beach or anyplace with a water view (river, lake, pond?)

9 – Your own backyard deck or patio or screened-in porch

10 – The library

It’s summer, and the last thing you should feel is trapped or bored. So, order up a change of venue and enjoy the creativity that flows as you enter that new space. Where will you go today???

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Grace and Humility

I took a great yoga class night that got me thinking about the mind-body connection in a whole new way. The instructor (Heidi for those of you keeping track) kept asking us:

“What would it look like in your body if you fully opened yourself to grace and humility?”

That’s a pretty good question when you’re twisted into a pretzel and trying to keep your balance! But when I let my BODY answer it instead of my mind, I found the pose went a little farther, the stretch was a little deeper, the exhilaration was even greater.

Being open to grace makes me roll my shoulders back, makes me lift my face skyward, makes me breathe more fully. It is an expression of confidence –  that I’ll be taken care of, that everything I need is already there or will be provided. Being open to grace says “Here I am” and “I can do this” and “Bring it on.”

Conversely, being open to humility gets my ego out of the way; it makes me bow more deeply, makes me curl into myself, allows me to surrender. It’s an expression of gratitude – a reminder that I didn’t really earn any of the blessings I have – that each and every good thing – my health, my family, my career, even my productive morning or shiny new belonging – are gifts bestowed upon me that could just have easily gone to someone else. Being open to humility whispers “thank you” and  “i am grateful” and “i am blessed, blessed, so very very blessed.”

Holding those two thoughts in my head simultaneously, let alone getting my BODY to express BOTH of them is daunting! How do you express both seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time?

I think the answer lies in this amazing quote by Glennon Melton of Momastery. (If you’d like to read her whole post, it’s here.)

“Be confident because you are  a child of God. Be humble because everyone else is, too.”

Brilliant, right? I love the idea of having both confidence that grace will be extended to me and humility because that doesn’t make me more special than anyone else. If I had to express both of those things simultaneously in my body I would be balanced. I’d be firmly grounded yet uplifted. When a yoga instructor says “Ground down, reach out” this is what I imagine she means. Grounded in humility, uplifted by grace. And believe it or not, it’s one of the most natural and effortless yoga poses to hold. Imagine that.

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Alarming statistics

In her exceptional book,  I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), Brene Brown, Ph.D. shares some alarming statistics. As she explores the role of social-community expectations of appearance on women today, she lays out these facts like a string of firecrackers ready to explode…

  • Approximately seven million girls and women suffer from an eating disorder.
  • Up to nineteen percent of college-aged women are bulimic.
  • Eating disorders are the third most common chronic illness among females.
  • The latest surveys show very young girls are going on diets because they think they are fat and unattractive. In one American survey, 80% of ten-year-old girls had already dieted at least once.
  • A research survey found that the single largest group of high school students considering or attempting suicide are girls who feel they are overweight.
  • Among women over eighteen looking at themselves in the mirror, research indicates that at least 80% are unhappy with what they see. Many will not even be seeing an accurate reflection; up to 80% of women overestimate their size. Increasing numbers of women with no weight problems or clinical psychological disorders look at themselves in the mirror and see ugliness and fat.
  • Since 1997 there has been a 465% increase in the total number of cosmetic procedures. Women had 10.7 million procedures, 90% of the total. The top 5 were: liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, tummy tuck, and facelift. Americans spent just under $12.5 BILLION on cosmetic procedures in 2004.

Wow.

Take  a minute to soak all of that in. Go back and read those facts again, because they are FACTS, not propaganda, not distorted truths. The FACTS say that AT LEAST 80% OF US are unhappy with how we look when we look in the mirror. It starts young, with our 10-year-olds already on diets, and it spirals out of control quickly with our college students prone to anorexia and bulimia. It continues for too long with young adults, mothers and grandmothers still experiencing the effects of body hatred, disordered eating, and relentless self-criticism.

Chances are, you haven’t been spared from these issues. Statistically speaking, you are likely to recognize yourself in one or more of the alarming facts highlighted above. I certainly do.

I’m angry about the years I’ve wasted and watched others waste diverting energy from truly important contributions we could be making to focus instead on the size of our thighs or the roundness of our bellies. I’m tired of every magazine headline on the news stand promising the secret to thinner thighs or a flatter belly or a tighter rear end. I’m frustrated by the ads flooding the internet for diet pills and miracle cleanses and gimmicky exercise equipment. I KNOW we’re smarter than all of this, but I also know that we’re incredibly tempted by it in our desperation to “fix” ourselves once and for all.

I’d like to write more about this over the upcoming weeks and months….we need to break this cycle of madness that is driving our children into this dark hole right with us, and I’ll need your help. But for today, can you do just one thing? Can you listen for that voice of self-criticism that tells you that you’re not enough…and when she speaks, politely ask her to shut up? We have important things to do, and she’s in our way.

 

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