You Deserve Respect

I follow a few different guru's in the field and one thing that became a topic of discussion is the idea of what we as individuals "deserve".

First off, you deserve to trust your body’s cues and nourish yourself, no matter what size you are. Respect yourself and your body by listening to it and allowing it to have a voice. 

In order to get to that point, its helpful to stop restricting and stop feeling out of control with food, no matter what size you are. Food doesn't need to own you and your thoughts. The more we focus on our diet the more out of control we generally feel. Turn the dial on the volume of your inner critic and listen to your bodies sensations and feelings.

Its even important to recognize that you deserve, to be able to walk down the street without fear, no matter what size you are.

You deserve to be mindful, and in the here and now in the big, and small, everyday moments—no matter what size you are. You can be you and not have to shrink your body before you're allowed to live fully. 

You can miss out on these kinds of opportunities—or not even realize what kinds of opportunities that are available if your are focused on your size. Acknowledging and practicing what you true passionate about is the greatest gift you can give yourself. 

So let go out having your mind focused completely occupied by the rules and restrictions of diet culture.  By jumping into a mindful of hope, freedom and joy for the future without diet culture controlling your happiness. If you blame yourself for falling into diet culture that can also be a trap that can hinder your joy, do you best to recognize that you deserve to be free of guilt, shame, and unrealistic expectations.

7 Ways to Feel More Secure

First off what does it mean to feel insecure? Sure we've all heard that word before, but often I think words get misused and that people have different ways of explaining feeling words, so here is how I define insecure: Feeling fear or anxiety about not being good enough, or that you’re not going to get what you want, or that you will be abandoned, this may cause a racing mind and heart, sweating, feelings of uncertainty or dread. 

Now with that understanding here are 7 ways to feel more secure:

1. Feel your feelings. People try to push insecurities down or to forget them or ignore them. However, there is tremendous opportunity to grow from them, by feeling the uncomfortable feelings and processing them you can deal with them head on, and grow from them. Test out just how real the fears are or if you are simply holding yourself back.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. Insecurities have less power when people understand both their strengths and weaknesses work together to make them unique. Keep a long of what your strengths are, what you feel adds to your life, and what you are grateful for. 

3. Stop comparing yourself to others. From a distance, other people might seem happier, more successful, thinner or wealthier. But often, that is just how it looks. You never truly know what someone else is going through unless they open their whole life to you, its like the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover", what people put out their is typically just a representative of what their real life is.

4. Live in the now. Insecurities often arise when people live in the future or the past. They worry that new things won't turn out positive or that the past will repeat itself. What if you just simply focused on right now, in this moment and lived life as though all you had was this moment?

5. Share your feelings. Often times when we feel insecure we keep it to ourselves, this can very easily keep us stuck. By sharing our emotions with a trusted person we can get the release of letting some of the emotion go, support from someone else, and possibly and objective look on the situation. 

6. Practice doing what you know. If we build on our strengths they can often translate to helping us fight our insecurities. For example if you are really fantastic at fixing things around the house, then practice that, feeling the strength and accomplishment from performing that task, all of those feelings can thing get stored in your mental strength tool box. Then when it comes to the time to give a public speech, all the strength you built up in your mental tool box can get used in to fuel you through what scares you.

7.  Avoid people that make you feel small. You have to protect yourself. That should be your first priority, you are the first priority to you. If you surround yourself with people that empower, encourage and inspire you, then your life will feel more full, safe, and secure. 

New Blog Series

In the upcoming weeks I plan to post interviews that I have with fellow therapist and professionals about who they are, where they want to go, and what they'd like to help people with. 

This an opportunity for both myself and the readers of the blog. For you, it lets you be aware of other professionals that are interested in helping, with changing their corner of the world, that believe in the therapeutic process to be healing. For myself, it helps me to expand my horizons, leave my comfort zone of my little corner and embrace the community.  

I hope this series is helpful and empowering, if you have an idea of what you'd like to see me do next with my blog, please feel free to leave comments below!