On Trusting the Process

I once had a client who had yo-yoed through a few different numbers (weights, sizes, however you like to measure your physical progress).

Before I continue, I’d like to point out that most of us have done this. It’s totally normal. Expected, even. Different seasons of our lives require different levels of commitment to our goals, or even different goals altogether. It’s all okay. You (and your body) are still deserving of love, care, and respect, no matter the size, shape, or degrees of bending to your will it is doing. Moving on.

She was going home to spend time with her high school friends, who had known her at her heaviest, and had also seen pictures of her at her leanest, and she was somewhere in between, at that moment. She was distraught at the prospect of being seen in a bathing suit around people who hadn’t seen her in years, for the first time without a shirt over her swimsuit.

When she got home from her trip and I asked how it went, she was still in mild shock to report that the only comments people had to make about her body were…positive.

Despite working to discover a new path to movement and food that worked with her everyday life and called in ease and strength, she had been telling a story where she was a failure: she wasn’t complying with her diet, she had some hormonal issues going on, and she wasn’t seeing results as quickly as she wanted. This feeling seeped through every channel of her being, and she was afraid that her friends would make comments that echoed the low rumbling whispers of failure weaving cobwebs in the corners of her mind, distributing Black Widow-caliber venom.

As it turned out, she had nothing to fear at all. Not only because we often don’t speak to other people the way we berate ourselves, but also because when we’re on a mission to stake our own claims in the world, that commitment to ourselves radiates off of us in waves. We emit warmth, happiness, confidence: a true sense of knowing ourselves and being at peace with her.

It takes getting knocked down a few times, getting it wrong a few times, and getting gritty. But if we stick it out and relentlessly pursue our bigness, we reap the rewards in droves.

xoxo,
Steph