Loving Ourselves First

As I browsed through some blogs, I came across this on feelgoodeating.blogspot.com:

"A fool in love makes no sense to me. I only think you are a fool If you do not love."

What a beautiful quote! 

I believe that love is one of the strongest powers in existence. I could go on to argue that love gives purpose to life. 

Love is passion.
   Love is relationships.
      Love is respect for self and others.
         Loving yourself and others and to be loved is happiness. 

To love ourselves is to take care of our own well-beings. 

Without that fundamental base of self-care, how can we expect to provide the best love and care for others? Far too often, there is an imbalance between the energy we spend in the outpouring of care versus the energy used to make sure we are at our well-est. 

Imagine if we held on to a fraction of the energy we expend doing things for others, meeting others' deadlines, and making sure others know we love them. 

To love and care for yourself is not selfish, but necessary.

Making sure we feed ourselves nutritious, yummy foods, keep our bodies strong and limber with proper stretching and exercise, maintain mental stimulation for our brains and honor our needs for rest and relaxation are all vital for us to thrive and reach our fullest potential. 

To believe we do not deserve the same love we share with others is nonsense. To dishonor our bodies, minds and spirits through neglect, poor quality foods, physical and chemical abuse, and negative self-talk only broods more negativity. 

We all deserve happiness; taking self-care measures to bring more light and positive energy into our lives puts us in a much better place to be able to share that same bright energy with others. 

So here's to cooking a good, hearty meal, getting to the gym, allowing room for more laughter and taking long, soothing bubble baths to ease ourselves to restful sleep!

Learning from Injury

Last summer, I cried when the persistent pain in my shoulder was diagnosed as “long thoracic nerve palsy.” Hearing the clinical terms scared me as I associated “palsy” with “something really, really bad.” The nerve damage greatly reduced my range of motion of my dominant arm and made lifting anything over three pounds impossible. I felt defeated on the weight room floor as even the lightest dumbell was too heavy; just a week ago, I had been able to press 20 pound dumbells over-head with ease. Even with the reassurance of  my physical therapist, I worried that I would never regain the strength that I had worked so hard to build.

After the initial mental/emotional sting of being injured subsided and after doing research on my condition, I was able to see the shades in between the black and white. Since I had always been active, my body would theoretically respond and repair quicker than if I had led a sedentary lifestyle. Looking for the universe’s message in the situation, I realized I had not given my muscles a prolonged break from constant weight lifting in years. So, I resolved to take a one-month weight lifting hiatus, as much as it pained me to do so, sticking only to cardiovascular training. In the mean time, I would experiment with different forms of cardio while I attended physical therapy.

Performing my exercises in therapy, I felt embarrassed that my shoulder blade winged out under the slightest pressure of lifting a three-pound handweight. When I reached for something above my head, my right arm laid limp and useless beside me. Even the weight of my own arm was too much for my shoulder to handle as I had to assist it upwards with the help of my uninjured arm. The frustration was endless, but I kept telling myself to trust in my body’s ability to heal and to be kind to it in its weakened state.

Over months of work, I slowly climbed the weight stack. I learned to recognize the smallest of signs of progression; Reaching for a bowl without having to assist with my good arm or bringing my hands to touch overhead during yoga were celebratory feats. The gratitude I had for the human body’s musculo-skeletal system grew with every menial task I was able to accomplish.

Almost a year later, I still catch myself babying my shoulder, afraid to undo any prograss I had made or, worse, reinjure it. With kindness and trust in my body’s abilities to heal and grow stronger, I am back on the weight room floor, setting personal records and attacking new highs with more intesity than every before. I relish in my abilities to do an unassisted pull up and hold a flexed arm hang for moments at a time. Just months ago, asking my shoulder to support such movements was laughable. I am not at 100% recovery, but I am very close. The progress is still slow, but that is okay.The lessons I’ve learned along this path have been worth the frustration. I’ve learned to be patient with as my muscles would only let me inch forward no matter how badly I wanted to leap. My ability to let go has been tested as I never discovered where the nerve damage came from, and I probably never will. I embrace that my body is the only one I will ever live in and I must treat is with love, compassion and care in order for it to bring me through a (hopefully) long, strong and healthy life!

Benefit of the Doubt

As I held a door open for a lady, she whizzed by as if the door were automatic, paying no mind to the fact that I was just another customer like her. As a knee jerk response, I felt the need to curse her rudeness and edged on sarcastically shouting “you’re welcome!” at her back, but what good would that do? Would that really satisfy me?

Every person has a back story. Every moment is preceded by a series of other moments before it. All I knew of that woman was in that solitary moment that she breezed by me with nary a thank-you nod- it was my choice to take it personally or not.

Always one to give someone the benefit of the doubt, I took a moment to pull back my defense mechanisms, take a breath, and realize she meant absolutely no personal harm towards me. Who knows what had been on her mind? Who knows where she was rushing to or where her focus was? What I do know is that she, just like I, is human with emotions and busy-ness in her life.

I’m certain that at one point during a particularly stressful day, I quite possibly could have offended someone or accidentally neglected to use my manners. Unfortunately, to whomever the victims of my acts of accidental unkindness, those may have been the only impressions of me they will ever receive. All I can do is hope they give me the same benefit of the doubt and realize it was not at all intentional and that, had I taken a moment to pay more attention, I would have absolutely chosen to act more respectfully.

This is a lesson slowly started to form over the years working in the food service industry. Anyone that has every waited tables, served beverages, rung up orders or the like has a story of a guests’ rudeness or a personal encounter with a customer’s projection of negativity. I admit that it was definitely difficult to continuously award the benefit of the doubt when I seemingly had to bite my tongue on a daily basis, but now that I have strengthened my patience-muscle, I am able to step back, exhale and think instead of react.

Everyone has a bad day. Even I, someone with a perma-smile and a continuous laugh, have my moments. I try never to step on toes or offend, but I’m sure it has and will happen unconsciously. In keeping with the old adage, I give kindness and compassion unto others as I would hope they would give unto me. After all, life is more beautiful if we can see people as innately good-intentioned with the occasional off-day.

Everybody Poops!

Clothing labels, the number of zeros on a paycheck, type of car, the amount of square footage of property- none of these things define who someone really is. Strip away all the glitz, the objective possessions, the social notoriety and to a certain degree, we are all the same. Our basic needs of food, water, oxygen and rest are all consistent across the board, as long as the genus is human. On a contemplative hike with a girlfriend on today’s beautiful morning, we both agreed that the core equality amongst all people can be summarized in the most simplistic, toddler-level statement thateverybody poops.

With all that is available in the world to class up or trash down a person’s image, a hierarchical ladder of social status is created, entitling one person to be deemed as more superior than another. On such a superficial scale, judgments are passed on people, making them sub/super human based on the goodness of what they own, rather than the goodness of their souls. When taken down to the basic degree, the glamorously famed Jennifer Lopez is no different than non-celebrity-status, simplistic ol’ me!

My point in this realization is to vow to never let anyone make me feel sub-par to them. I’ve reached a point where I am tired of defending my non-partying ways, the enjoyment I get from a Saturday night spent quietly indoors with a good movie or novel, the need for a full eight hours of sleep resulting in a before-midnight bedtime (whether it be a weekday or not), etc… I am tired of the judgment for not being the typical twenty-something year old girl that stays out late on the weekends and frequents bars or house parties. I am done allowing people to make me feel I am not acting the way I should be- as if there were an officiated social-life timeline I was veering from.

The matter of letting go of the innateneedto be accepted by others is surpassed by theactual needto fully accept myself. I have absolutely no say in how others perceive me, but I do control how I perceive my situation. My peace will not come from trying to prove that the collective “they” are no better than I. My peace will come when I realize that I am no less a person than the collective “them.” Although seemingly the same statement, the latterputs me in the driver seat(not the greatest analogy, given the roughed up state of my car).

My energy would be wasted if I tried to preach such a mature theory of the universal human need of waste elimination, but I can change my thought energy by fully understanding it for myself. So, the next time I find my automatic self-defending response to “Why don’t you just have one drink?” or “What are you doing home on a Friday night?” I will not allow that person to make me feel like I have to prove my legitimacy as a 24 year old single woman. Instead, I will smile, shrug my shoulders, remind myself that everyone, including my judger, poops, and contently announce, “that’s just me!”

Sorry for Passing Judgment

It’s happened to just about everyone before: You wave a car past you and the driver neglects to give the appreciative hand signal, you hold open a door for complete strangers as they obliviously walk past without so much as a head nod, you stop traffic for a group of teenagers can safely cross the road only to watch them take their sweet time shuffling past, still texting on their cellphones. These things happen to me, almost on a daily basis. I can choose to react in one of two ways: I can get angry and decide they are ungrateful *******s, or I can give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming they may be having an off-day.

All too often, as human beings, we pass judgment on others before we even get a chance to think twice. As many times as we’ve been told not to judge a book by its cover, it really is instinctual to assess someone based on their looks and/or mannerisms. Upon giving someone the once over, we create stories about them in out minds: where they’re from, how they act, their values, if we are “better” than them or not.

Thoughts, albeit as powerful as they may be, are harmless unless taken to the next step. I could go in to a passionate activist rant here, but this is not what this platform is intended to be.  I strive to pass as little judgment as possible on people because, let’s face it, there are times when I hope others don’t judge me based on how I look/dress/act on first sighting- do unto others as you’d want done unto you.

I’m certain there have been days when I’ve been so blinded by something that had angered/frustrated/saddened me that I had forgotten to wave at someone kind enough to let me merge on to the highway or that I had completely overlooked the stranger who took his time to hold the door open for me to pass through- this is not the person I am (I hope).

On a majority of occasions, I’m grateful, courteous and polite but, like any other person with emotions, I have my occasional bad days interspersed with the good that effect my actions/outward moods. From this realization, I am able to take a moment before I pass judgment on others and call on another set of human abilities: compassion and empathy.

At the end of it all, I am the only person that really suffers from passing judgment on these people that may never appear in my life again. I can be angry/annoyed/disgusted by someone’s behavior, or I can take a deep breath, smile, and assume that the “jerk” that just flew by without so much as a “thank you” had just stepped in a big ol’ pile of dog poop just after getting his fancy new shoes shined.