You are Stronger than you know

When I teach my yoga classes, I always end by whispering an affirmation in everyone's ear during the final resting pose.  Sometimes I say:  "You are stronger than you know".  As adults, we don't often get the positive messaging and propping up that we could use to keep going.  We don't get those regular reminders that we often give to our children.  We can change that.

For the purposes of self improvement,  balance, wellness and weight loss, we need to rely on some of the things that make us great to begin with.  The core strengths, characteristics, virtues and qualities that we possess can actually motivate us and prop us up as we work towards our personal goals.  The better we feel, the better we do.  The happier we are, the more we want to achieve greater happiness and fulfillment.  It is a cycle that perpetuates itself.  We can use that.

Some of the characteristics that we talked about this week include:  perspective, gratitude, hope, love,
appreciation, forgiveness, honesty, leadership, kindness.  These are the strengths that we use in our daily lives, at work, at home, with our families and friends.  We can also use them to our advantage in our self improvement on our weight loss journey.  We can tap into those strengths and apply them to the ups and downs and daily challenges of losing weight.  For example, if someone is an honest person, that sense of honesty can be applied to tracking foods regularly, sticking to the fitness plan in place and following the basic guidelines of the program.  By being honest with ourselves, we are holding ourselves accountable.  Accountability goes a long way in creating lasting weight loss.  Let's take another example, like forgiveness.  Being a person who can forgive others means that we have to turn that forgiveness on ourselves and realize that when we don't follow the guidelines of the program, (alert:  the program is riddled with opportunities for human error) we can forgive ourselves, learn from the experience and move on.  Staying stuck is not an option because we are not going to play negative, self defeating tapes--another save.  We need that.

It is in our DNA to move to the dark side.  Our ancestors used this to their advantage.  It was a survival technique when external forces could swoop in and threaten life.  Most of us don't have that kind of desperation in our lives at this time in history.  However, our DNA still thinks we do.  We have to overcome that tendency to expect the worst and move towards the positive.

Over the weekend, I heard a Hurricane Katrina survivor talk about all the devastation he experienced with loss of home, job, health.  Ten years later, he said:  "Difficult does not mean impossible."  Yes, it is true.  In fact, you are stronger than you know.