If I could turn back time, there is one thing I do regret, all the other challenges were sent to me to help me evolve and grow.
My greatest regret is how little I loved my physical bod when I was growing up and into my 20’s and 30’s. How I judged it, put it down, ridiculed it, punished it, wished it to be something it wasn’t, and never saw how beautiful it was.
You see, my body didn’t fit into the ideal of a tall, slender, beach body like our idol Elle Macpherson had, instead, mine was strong, compact, and muscular.
I spent almost all my teens and twenties wishing I had another body. This beautiful gift, I never loved or appreciated the way I should have. I should have woken every day and said, “Hello gorgeous, thank you beautiful legs for the great work yesterday,” or “Hello lovely hands, you are tireless workers and I’m grateful.” Instead, I looked at my boobs and wanted them to be fuller, looked at my bum and wanted it to be flatter, sighed at my feet, wishing them to be narrower. I lived in ‘lack’ from the body up!!! I couldn’t see what I had; instead, I chose to focus on what I didn’t have, and that right there, ladies, is one of the greatest makes we make as a collective. Loving our bodies is a great place to start the process of loving yourself, respecting your choices, wants, and needs.
When we stop loving our bodies, we start to disconnect from the most powerful ally we have. Let me say that again: when we stop loving our bodies, we start to disconnect from the most powerful ally we have. Your body is way more than its physical shape — it’s your antenna. It receives intuitive messages, hunches, feelings that are all information that you can use to move through life, and when we disconnect from our bodies, we disconnect ourselves from all that beautiful information that is available to us. We literally turn off our gut instinct and slowly shut off our natural radar.
There is something else that happens too. We start to shut down our emotions. Our emotions are incredible indicators of what is going on in our lives and to turn these off is a tragedy. Emotions are ‘energy in motion,’ so imagine switching off the vital energy that transports life around your body. Gals, we need to love them.
I know young girls have even more pressure on them today than I did all those years ago with the girls at my local beach. You have social media that beams into your life 24/7 insane levels of perfection and comparison. Comparison is the parasite that quietly eats away at your self-esteem.
Choosing not to love our physical bodies is choosing not to love a big part of ourselves and we no longer know how to connect to our hearts, we become walking heads! Stuck in our heads. We turn down the intuition radar.
I invite you today to make peace with your body. Start to see how extraordinary it is even in its imperfection. Recognise that it’s looking after so much for you, oxygenating and pumping your blood, regulating your heart, seeing, hearing, eating, digesting, feeling, and trying to tell you stuff! Your body is growing new hair and nails whilst you get on with your life, it heals itself when you cut yourself and it’s your bestie. Your body loves you and takes such great care of you, imagine how your life would change if you afforded it the same love and respect?
Imagine your body is a beautiful bouquet of flowers or your favourite plant. It needs water, food, love, patience, and care.
When you start to take care of your physical body, love it, be kind to it, feed it well, appreciate it, let it have the rest it needs, when you start to respect yourself, you are saying ‘I love you.’
Give yourself the gift of ‘being enough’ today. Don’t make the mistake I did, wishing away my days for the days when I was a couple of kilos lighter so I could do X or putting off enjoying today because of Y.
Get out of the future and into the present! See that the grass is green, rich, and beautiful where you are right now.
Start to see your naked body as beautiful, even if it feels unnatural to start with. Find a way every day to talk to your body, acknowledge it and reconnect back to it.
Love your body like you want to be loved.
Four things you can do today:
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- See it as a plant that needs tending to, good food, rest, water, and kindness and it depends on you to take care of it.
- Every morning and every evening pay gratitude to your body for the gift it gives you.
- Start to speak to it like you would your very best friend. If your body hears loving words instead of criticism you too will absorb those loving words and start to believe them.
- Accept it exactly how it is. Stop putting off life till you transform it into some ideal of what you think it should be. Accept and see it’s wonderful just the way it is.
Sending you love and light,
Carla
