Weight Weight Just Love Me – Comparisons – Day 35

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Artichokes of power - we all need to sprout a pair.

Artichokes of power – I am happy I sprouted a pair.

This weekend, I’m helping five wonderfully unique woman learn how to create their own version of happiness through our  Inspired Eagle Yoga retreat with our Happy Aging Yoga mats.  This is what I live for – to help others soar.  I’ve said for years I teach what I need to learn. While teaching  this technique I call “conversational yoga,” it hit me – one of the reasons I get charged from an encounter is I’m somehow comparing myself to another.  The comparison usually starts with me thinking something like this – “well how dare they, I can’t imagine ever saying that to another person.”  And then the churning, bubbling and frothing of emotionality spews from there.  It all starts with the comparison.

Soooooo…… the core issue then is of comparison and it’s  blockage to loving myself more.  I know in my work with creating accelerated learning experiences, the way to accelerate learning is to remove the blockages that slow people down with learning. The same is true with learning how to love myself more – what gets in the way of this is comparing myself to others, to earlier versions of myself, or to some ideal state I feel I should be.  Who I am is unique and perfect just the way I am – even in all the ways I perceive myself as imperfect – those are perfect too.

We were discussing this thing about perfection in class yesterday.  Perfect in comparison to what standard?  I posed a contemplative question to the group – “who amongst us would ever tell a new mom their baby was anything less then perfect?”  We all have a bit more savoir faire and good social graces to know – of course a new baby is perfect, especially through the eyes of a new mom.   And at one point in time each of us was this perfect new baby, welcomed into this world.  At our core, yes, I am that perfect baby – just the way I am.  Unique in all the ways I’m unique.  Just like we each are.

My second “wasband” (this is ex-husband) used to teasingly admonish me about my lack of desire to show off my cleavage. He called it “boobs of power.” While I was flattered he was so attracted to this aspect of me, I’m relatively uncomfortable being sexy for the general population. I am more about brains than beauty anyhow. My friend Barb has said for years – “brains can buy beauty but beauty cannot by brains.”  Some woman feel if they have it, flaunt it.  This is not who I am.

I do understand people’s complimentary intentions when they say I can better leverage this or that aspect of what they enjoy about me.  I also know when it’s a reflection of their own insecurities born out of comparing me to some “ideal” that only serves to shame or blame. Of course, allowing others to follow their own path is my main mojo – we all get to choose how we move through the world.  For me, I’m choosing to love and enjoy the unique aspects of me – which does pretty much defy comparison. There is no one else like me. Loving and enjoying more of my uniqueness is the ultimate gift for myself.  Thank you Kate for inspiring me to do this 66 day challenge to love myself more.

 

Kate’s comment: It’s really interesting to see your transition to loving yourself and owning everything about yourself. Your point of comparisons made me think of this quote by Confucius:

“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.”

Maybe comparison is easy – it’s a simple default and it’s very easy to get stuck in. It’s like the universe’s entropy – disorder is natural and it takes effort to work against hate, bad things, or in this case, comparison.

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