You Make Me This, Bring Me Up, Bring Me Down

I have another goal completed!

For the last week, I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. Something I usually try to avoid. But every morning and every night I stood in front of the mirror with just my underwear on (sorry for the mental image) and recited the following mantra (as lengthy of a mantra that it is) and then found something about my body that I liked.

I am smart enough

I am good enough

I am confident enough

I am resourceful enough

I am strong enough

I am capable enough

I have absolute faith in myself

I have a dream and I will do whatever it takes to make it come alive

I will turn the impossible into possible

I will never give up

I will not crumble under even the greatest of life’s challenge

I will assume 100% responsibility for my own life

I will expect nothing but the best of myself

I am willing to pay the price to succeed

I will embrace failures

I will conquer my fears

I don’t care what other people think

People will judge me based on what I have achieved, but I will judge myself based on what I believe I can achieve

I will love, respect, and accept myself for who I am

I will have the courage to change what needs to be changed

No, I didn't write it, Google is a wonderful thing after all.  But I really did find it empowering, and I often ended up repeating it a couple of times afterwards; it would just stick in my head. And I spent the last week feeling pretty good about my accomplishments. So I would say mission accomplished and goal achieved.

I Don't Know But I Believe In Yesterday

Ok, so I lied when I said I would talk about the podcast yesterday, but I'll talk about it today!

The reason I found it intriguing is because the guest on Two Fit Chicks was talking about learning to love yourself by looking at yourself in the mirror. One of my goals (#55) is to practice looking at myself in the mirror and stating things I like about myself, and making that a regular practice. But this podcast gave me a slightly different variation of that. The idea is to stand with your back to the mirror first with your eyes closed and conjure up the thoughts and feelings of someone/something you love unconditionally (spouse, child, puppy, whatever you need to think about) until you literally physically feel the love and emotion for that person. Only when you physically feel this do you turn around and slowly soften and open your eyes to transfer that visceral feeling of love onto yourself. It sounds a bit hokey, but somehow still powerful.

The argument is that it's relatively meaningless for me to stand in front of the mirror and force myself to think something like "Wow, I love my eyes", or "My wrists are great". If I don't believe it, if there is no meaning in me saying it, am I really providing any benefit in the exercise? If I continue to say it, the hope is that I will eventually believe it, but will that really work? This slightly different approach assumes that feelings and emotions are much stronger than just logical thought in your brain. If you feel the love directed at yourself, an association will develop, and eventually you actually will believe that your eyes are beautiful and that you have wonderful wrists, and that the rest of your body is open to be truly loved as well. Not to mention the rest of your being!

Anyhow, it gave me some food for thought in how to approach that particular goal. And speaking of goals, I watched another movie from my list last night, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was my first introduction to a real live Marilyn Munroe (of course I've seen pictures) and it was actually a cute movie. Sometimes hard to remember that songs just naturally appear in movies of that age, but a refreshing change really. I really have no idea where they got the title from, it really should have been called Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend, or something along those lines. The title just made me feel bad for her equally pretty and talented brunette friend. Overall, it was a good movie, and I have 4 more 'classic' movies to watch to complete Goal #11. And yes, classic by my own definition!

I wish I found it easier to get up early; mornings are so beautiful! I hit the farmer's market this morning for strawberries, raspberries, cherries, asparagus and baby potatoes, then went for a run. I've really been feeling like a legitimate runner lately; I just feel lighter on my feet, there's more bounce in my step, even when I'm getting tired. So I was rather saddened to calculate that I only covered 5.55km this morning in 55 minutes. And I thought I had done quite well and was improving. But it is what it is, I need to keep focus on finishing the 10km race, not worrying about how fast I do it.

Nick* and I are headed out today for mini-golf, batting cages, rock-climbing, Ribfest, and Bad Teacher. I love date days! Oh, and Wag-Jag too for providing the first 3 activities at a low cost =)