Sometimes you hear exactly what you need to hear exactly when you need to hear it. Sometimes, even when you don’t know you need to hear it.
Today, I was sitting at my desk at work – you know, working, as you do – when my co-worker sent me a link to an article. We typically send each other things back and forth during the day. In the interest of being completely transparent with you, it’s usually Buzzfeed articles or celeb gossip.
But today, it was an article called “Creating a New Mission Statement”. Not our typical fare, to say the least. But I opened it and started to read it, and as I read it, I thought, “huh. This is exactly what I needed to read today.”
And not just today, but lately. For the last year or so. I’ve been pretty open about struggling with my body image on this blog. About how, after I stopped nursing Bug, I quickly gained the ten pounds that basically refuse to evacuate my body no matter what I do to it.
And, you know, continuing in the vein of being transparent, I haven’t been that nice to it. I’ve derided it. I’ve called it names. I’ve scoffed at its reflection in the mirror and called myself fat and stared at myself in windows as I walk down the street, thinking “you have really let yourself go, man.”
This is something I think about all the time.
Anyway, this article. This article is about the power of creating a personal mission statement. The article states that “in creating a mission statement, coaches say it is important to identify the underlying values that may motivate change rather than focusing on a single behavior.” When you tap into these values – the why and the what of your goal – you begin to understand intrinsically why it’s so important to you. “I want to be skinny again” isn’t digging deep, and that’s what I’ve been telling myself. That’s it. “I want to be skinny again.”
Well, that’s great. But why? Why am I so desperate to get back to this girl?
So, I’ve decided to work on my mission statement. To dig deep and try to understand why I want to get “skinny” again. And maybe once I uncover all of it (which, to be honest, probably has to do with my looks tying in with self worth and people telling me I was beautiful when I was young and abunch of other self-esteem things that are way too crazy to get into here), it won’t even have anything to do with getting skinny again. Maybe it’ll have more to do with eating food that makes my body feel good. Or getting back into yoga because it calms my mind. Or doing bar method, because while I am in perma-FML mode while I’m doing it, I love it as soon as it’s over.
Maybe because it’s over.
Anyway.
As if that weren’t enough, the universe nudged me again today. I went on Tumblr earlier (kind of addicted, not even sorry) and was hit in the face with this:
Working on it. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully I’ll be bringing my mission statement to you next post.
In the meantime, tell me what your mission statement is, or would be, or let’s just sing Bootylicious by Destiny’s Child.
Westie, I feel like even though we’re a bazillion miles apart, geographically speaking, and even though our lives aren’t exactly carbon copies of each other, you and I are often in the same(ish) place at the same time. This post really spoke to me. A lot of this is exactly what I’ve been working on the last few months, turning my focus inward and really looking DEEP, figuring out not just what needs changing, but WHY it needs changing. So yeah. I feel you 🙂
Thanks, dude. You and me are simpatico, PER USUAL. I hope you are being kind to yourself. I’m working on that.
(Also, super sorry for this SUPER late response. WordPress wasn’t notifying me of responses so I just saw this.)
I’m feeling you, especially because my face isn’t looking exactly like I’ve been used to it being for the past 37 years. And I hate to think about it as vanity, but it is, partially. And I don’t have control over it… like I potentially can have control over my body and the pounds that I’ve put on recently. I guess I’m trying to focus on what I can change instead of what I can’t and to accept what I can’t change as the new normal. At least for now. Anyway, I’m going to check out the article. And I love you.
I feel like we’re kind of ALWAYS having to adjust to a new normal, you know? Even when things change infinitesimally, we have to recalibrate to that. So, yeah, it’s hard. Being a grown up is hard!
I love you too. (See my message above about why this comment is so delayed, wah)
This totally resonates with me! Way too much of my sense of self worth ties into being told I’m pretty, and I used to get that a lot more when I was younger. I started getting super depressed about it and feeling like that was all I was, and it was going away so there wasn’t much left… basically getting fines lines equaled my life being over (in my head). I’m working on that… Things change, bodies change (no matter how healthy we try to be, faces change… I need to accept it and realize I’m more than my looks.
Thank you for sharing! I needed that 🙂
I’m so glad it spoke to you, Leetra! I also think it’s partly that, as women, our self worth is so tied into our looks. It’s what the media’s told us, what society has told us, and so that’s what we tell ourselves. It’s so hard to break the cycle and remember that beauty just isn’t on the outside. There’s so much other internal stuff that goes on to make us pretty too. Easy to say, hard to remember. 🙂