I am more than my body

Things have been going well.  Quite well, in fact.  I’ve been doing interviews for my book and having a FABULOUS time!  I’ve been getting tons of valuable support from my colleagues.  I’ve been feeling really good about the work that I’m doing.  I’ve been reading a lot and making lots of plans.

And you know what that means, right?!  If things are going this well, there’s obviously some type of crisis coming!  And the longer the crisis takes to show up, the WORSE it’s going to be.  Since the crisis hadn’t shown itself, the only sensible thing to do is CREATE ONE!!!!!

If you’ve read Gay Hendricks’ amazing book “The Big Leap,” he calls it hitting your Upper Limit.  In other words: how much tolerance do we have for feeling good before we have to do something to sabotage it?

Well, apparently I found my current upper limit because I have been creating drama all over the place for the last week.  To the point that I sent out two CAH-RAY-ZEEE emails to friends on Tuesday asking for help.  And not just a little crazy sauce on top, but full scale CRAZY.

One of my friends responded with an email that started out thusly:

“You are freaking out. Stop it. NOW.”  🙂

In the midst of my descent into freak-out land, I was blaming it all on external events.  But here’s the thing – if I’d been paying attention, I would have known that this was an internally-driven tornado of cray-cray.  Because there’s one thing that is ALWAYS a harbinger of “Leah’s getting ready to jump off a cliff of her own making.”

Body image.

Yep, that’s my Achilles heel.  When the body image issues start cropping up, it’s time to Start. Paying. Attention.

And they’ve been poking their little heads out all over the place this week.

I’ve written about body image on this journal more than once, and I wrote about it in my first book Transforming Your Body Image – I’ve done so much healing, but it’s still the old issue that’s most likely to show up on the hit parade when my psyche starts descending.

Last night I was watching a reality competition show (which, as I’ve mentioned, is my favorite little guilty pleasure to indulge in when I need to wind down).  On this particular show, there’s a woman of ample physical means.  And she looks GREAT.  She owns every pound.  When she steps up, I don’t see her body, I see her smile.  I see her inner zest.  I see her fabulousness.  I don’t give a flying f*** how much she weighs.

Watching her onscreen, I went somewhere breathtakingly ridiculous: I envied her for how overweight she is…because if only I could be that clearly overweight, it would be easier for me to own every pound.

Ahem.  EXCUSE ME?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

That is absurd ridiculosity.  But it’s actually not an uncommon thought for me.  I’ve always been an “in between” weight – I’m not a skinny little girl, but I’m also not a really big girl.

I remember being at the lake with some classmates in our swimsuits when we were about 11 or 12 and admiring a girl who was 20 pounds heavier than I was.  “I wish I were either skinny or plump,” I thought way back then.  “At least if I were big like her, I could just be who I am.  Instead, I have to be a not-skinny girl who’s doing everything she can to pretend that she’s skinny.”

(Let me just interject here that at the time I was not even remotely overweight. But my father had already started telling me that I was getting fat.)

And because things were going too well, I started creating drama around my favorite go-to: wishing my body looked different than it does.

Yesterday I was able to spend some time on the phone with my beloved friend and mentor Rev. Nancy.  She helped me work through the processes that I was a little too mentally frayed to work through on my own (yes, even coaches need coaches!)

And then she offered me this very powerful thought:

“The reason a 400-pound woman can show up and own every pound of who she is and look fabulous is because she knows that she is more than her body.”

So this is my mantra for the foreseeable future:  I am more than my body.

I am the sum total of my skills, talents, experiences, desires, passions, loves.  My body is the vehicle that houses my Spirit.  Some days I may feel like it’s a little red Corvette and other days I may feel like it’s a tank, but what really matters is that it has four wheels and an engine that allow my Spirit to go wherever I need to go.

It is my job to treat my body well, but the size and shape of my body is NOT a determining factor of my worthiness and value as a person.

And it damn sure isn’t a good reason to derail a perfectly good time in my personal and professional life!

I am MORE than my body. I am my skills, talents, passions & spirit. #positiveselfimage <– TWEET this

AND SO ARE YOU!!!!