March Fitness Challenge - Emotional Rescue

For the past month the fitness challenge has been an emotional one.  While it is easy for us as Lippy ladies to give compliments to others and see the hard work and progress they are making in their strive to become more fit, it is really a challenge to give ourselves compliments, and this was the inspiration for the March Challenge.

So while I sit here listening to Mick Jagger singing to me that he will be my knight in shining armor, coming to my emotional rescue I begin...

Hearing a compliment from someone, from anyone, is amazing and I find that my first instinct is to make light of it or joke about it, and my husband hates when I do this.  He finds me beautiful, just as I am; when I wake up with hair going every which way and Clark Kent glasses dangling ever so close to falling off my nose, he reaches for me and embraces me with a hug that reassures me I am his goddess.

For me just accepting a compliment is tough, but giving myself one, especially of a physical nature, well now you are crossing the line my friend.  It was only seeing others in the Lipedema Fitness facebook support group downplaying themselves that got me fired up enough to say NO MORE.

I was excited to see the ladies step up to the plate, at first giving themselves backhanded compliments (like from the waste up I am pretty) - while yes, it is very true, you are pretty, but not only from the waste up.  Then more and more obvious compliments started to show up, so much that if you didn't know it was a compliment one's self challenge and happened upon the support group you might think we were a bunch of self lovers - and why not?  Why shouldn't one love their own self?

I remember reading something a long time ago that God doesn't make garbage, and by not appreciating one's self you basking were saying that God made a mistake.  I'm a spiritual person, not overly religious, but that really stuck with me over the years.  Then I came across a movie "What the Bleep do we Know?" that had a part in it, an experiment where they complimented water both positively and negatively - I'm not sure what you believe, but it was an interesting view point for sure on the power of one's own words and the words of others.

I began slowly with my own compliments, "you have great hair", "you have a wonderful smile", then I got more in to it, "I love my secret muscles" - secret because most of the world cannot see them hidden under my lippy fat, but I can feel them, and they are damn sexy.  Shoulders I never knew I could have, sing on Mick, but know that I am my own emotional rescue.  We can not believe another until we can believe ourselves.

So get up and go to a mirror, look at it, that is you - you are a beauty!  Now say something nice about yourself.  You might find you laugh at first, find that you start with small compliments, but do it at least once a day - and say it out loud using your own name.  Try it for a day, for a week, for a month, for EVER - what can happen when you know you will get at least one great compliment a day from someone who knows you better than anyone else possibly could?  I don't know, but I look forward to finding out!