Ch-Ch-Changes!

So recently my sister and I made the decision it was time to get off of our duffs and make some changes in our lives for the better. Taking the plunge based on some research {we're both historians so yeah research was a given} and feedback from an awesome friend {thanks Nubia!} we purchased the Fitbit flex. It's been a little over a week and I have to say it does start making you think differently about your activity level and getting those extra steps in each day. I've used ones of those step counters before, but this one is more in depth and more targeted to making you mindful of the choices you make regarding activity. I'm excited to see where it is going to lead, not only for overall fitness, but of the different choices we can then make based on these reminders. 

Health issues run in our family so it wasn't only the decision to get health because we wanted to, but also because quite frankly we need to as well. We've lost too many loved ones to complications from heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues. I mean I know we don't get out of this life alive {kinda a dark thought, but hey it's true!} but I want to make the most of it and live every second to the best of my ability because this life is about expanding our knowledge and learning as much as we possibly can in our short time here on Earth. 

I think it helps when we band together as well to cheer each other on and lighten the burden of becoming a more healthy individual. I think far too often we've been given examples of how to break one another down to feel better about ourselves when really what we need to do is pull together and lift one another up. Technology is so amazing in this effort and we can really reach out and build one another up. We've built our support network to help cheer {and sometimes taunt ;) } us along the way and to remind us when we fail to keep those goals and plans. I'm super excited to see what the coming days, weeks, and months bring with the changes we are making and seeing how the small little things eventually add up to the BIG things in our lives. 

Confessions of a self saboteur

I'm my own worst enemy. I don't need someone to tell me I missed something, I know I did and I beat myself up over it for days on end. Missed a question on a test - five day bender of crying, excessive obsession over reviewing, and restructuring of future study guides (yes I made my own and yes they were awesome). I can go on and give more examples, but you catch my drift. I'm terribly hard on myself. I have been since I was young and as I've gotten older I have only gotten worse. I drive my sister insane with how hard I am on myself as I come home from work beating myself up for not handling something right or letting something get out of control or not getting every last bit of the work completed. Most days I think I set myself up for failure because I set the bar so incredibly high knowing I won't reach that height for one reason or another. My life devolved into a mess of coming home and feeling like a failure who couldn't complete the simplest of tasks.

This week I got to attend a training class on leadership and this woman talked about being enough. She said that after being in her career for so many years she had learned she was finally enough. Enough for herself, for her work, for every aspect of her life she was enough. Now I will say she is a little older, but I envy her statement. I envy her ability to feel confident enough to stand up and say that she is enough for any aspect of her life. I'm no where near being able to say I'm enough, mainly because somewhere down deep I'm thinking I'm not as much as so and so how has good hair or so and so who has this and so and so who is this. I fall into that little trap so dang much each and every day. Really the lengths I put myself through are quite astounding really. I'm my own worst enemy.

I think sometimes though women are trained to be our own worst enemies. We see the pictures on glossy magazines waving in our faces at the checkout lines. Taunting us with images of people we will never be because in all actuality those women don't exist either. They are images of fiction, nipped and tucked courtesy of photoshop and airbrushing. They are caricatures of their real selves on display for the world to see. These are the images we are held up against and throughout our lives we are trained to think unless we are like them we are less than something. I think I drank the kool-aid. Too much of those images and thoughts and ideas wore through my thick skull and left their impression. And I don't just mean in the physical aspect of myself, but in all aspects. I constantly knock myself down and hold myself to some unreasonable standard of excellence that honestly no one could really attain. The trick then becomes bringing what I want to be in alignment to what and who I actually am today. The effort becomes being able to say I am enough, I'm good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, smart enough, and worth enough to keep going forward with my plans and dreams and goals.

Buckets and dippers

A few years ago my mom, sister, and I drove up to Nashville for a Time Out for Women conference. I was still in my first round of undergraduate studies and had some homework assignments I needed to complete our first day so we wandered around Fisk University looking at some interesting art before the conference the next morning. We were late for the start, some accident on the highway backed everything up for miles. It wasn't fun missing the beginning, but looking back i don't even think we missed much of anything. Somewhere towards the middle Mary Ellen Edmunds gave a really incredible talk. She was talking about how we sometimes make assumptions about people without knowing the full story. I don't remember all the particulars, it's been almost a decade since we went to this conference, but I remember her giving some great advice about keeping our dippers out of others buckets. 

We live in a world where it's acceptable to belittle another in an effort to make ourselves feel better. Somewhere along the lines we became okay with putting someone down for some perceived shortcoming they possess. We don't accept people for who they are, what they like or believe or trust. Instead we are only okay with those who look, believe, think, or dress like us. Society has crafted these images of who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to look like instead of embracing our differences.If we don't look like Jennifer Aniston or Beyonce or any one of the numerous other actors and actresses then our worth to society is diminished. We have become a society  focused on the outward rather than the inward and in the process we've taught ourselves to think little of ourselves. 

I'm the absolute worst at thinking little of myself. I don't think I'm enough of one thing or another. I don't always see the things I accomplish and I always think someone else can do a better job than myself. It drives my co worker up the wall. We've had many of arguments over this fact. In the end it doesn't get me anywhere, it simply robs me of seeng and appreciating accomplishing a task. In essence I plunge my dipper into my bucket, take out some water, and pour it on the ground. I don't put it in someone else's bucket, I waste the hard work I've put into the task. Now Sister Edmunds was talking about how we talk about others and when we do we take something from their bucket but we don't put it into ours, we waste their water (self confidence) by pouring it out into the empty space. Our buckets do not get any fuller by robbing someone else of their water - we don't really feel better when we belittle someone behind their back. Instead it colors our perceptions of those we talk about or mock or make fun of or dismiss.

We talked about this today in Relief Society in our lesson, about being kind and remembering everyone is going through trials. I think sometimes we see people for who we want them to be rather than who are they are currently. When those two don't match up we get angry and frustrated. I know myself sometimes that is my own problem. I want someone to be more than they are now and when they don't live up to that expectation then I'm disappointed, frustrated, and angry. So I let my frustration out to someone else and in the process all I'm really doing is robbing them of their ability by taking water from their bucket and pouring it out. While venting is a part of life, harping on it doesn't change the situation or make the issue go away. Accepting someone for their faults isn't easy and I'm still learning how to do that each and every day, but I know it's worth it for my own peace of mind and progression.