Good to your "self" - Week Four: Empower

It's Wednesday already and that means its the final installment of my body series Be Good to Your "Self" project. It's been a humbling and eye opening experience for me and I hope you all have had a chance to think about and look at yourself in more positive ways.

Today's final topic is not actually about a body feature at all. It's about your personality, another part of your self that people see that isn't physical but can be torn down by others just as easily. Our personalities come through with everything that we do. How we treat people, how we dress, what type of career path we take, and so on. What we are confident in and how we carry ourselves gets projected in the physical sense all the time. Our personality takes on a physical persona and people view that as a physical part of our "self".

End of Week 13 Dumbo Double Dare Training

Wait...week 13? What happened to week 12...moreover...what happened in week 13? Ha! Well...about that. The training as listed and even as I have adjusted didn't happen, at all. ::defeated sigh::

As you all know, or may not know, I've been having physical problems since having the baby. My hips have been bothering me a lot more and my left heel started to hurt after (and even during!) my runs. These two ailments have put me out of training commission for far too many weeks, my hip issues have even kept me from running a race all together (Snoqualmie Valley Half & 10k). 

These past few months have been frustrating and humbling beyond belief. From chiro visits, to sitting out many training runs, to getting a new mattress set, to trying new stretches and strengthening exercises. All to no avail...I was still plagued by horribly stiff, aching and painful hips and an increasing presence of heel pain that is now appearing in both feet.

Good to your "self" - Week Three: Embrace

Well, we are three weeks into this body series Be Good to Your "Self" project, where we are talking about what we love or appreciate about ourselves. The first week was Engage, where we talked about our best facial feature, the second week was Enjoy, where we talked about our best body feature. This week is along the theme of acceptance and appreciation, but it's about the thing we are pushing against, our flaws.

I know, how can talking about flaws be positive? Well, it's all about perspective. We can talk about positive things in negative ways and make the whole conversation negative, it's all about structure and wording. I have flaws, just like everyone else. I see them every time I look in the mirror. I know exactly where they are and my eyes go to that point every time I go in front of the mirror. It's like my sub-conscious is keeping tabs on them to make sure I'm reminded. "Is it still there? Oh yep, right where it was before." Yes, they are still there but you know what happens? I leave my place in front of the mirror and get on with my life.

Yes, life still goes on even though I have flaws and everyone can see them! I'll wait and let you process that for a second, go ahead, I'm patient.

Good to your "self" - Week two: Enjoy

I hope you all are having a great week so far, it is Wednesday, we're half way to the weekend! Today's post is the second installment of Be Good to Your "Self" project where the hope is that you read and share the great things about you, instead of focusing on what you want to change.

So today we will talk about the second word from the list I had provided in my previous post. To recap, the positive "E" words are: Engage, Enjoy, Embrace and Empower. We covered Engage last week, so this week we will talk about Enjoy. 

There have been very few times in my life that I've been told that I need to enjoy my body, that I need to be thankful and happy with what I have, I've always been told that there is something "wrong" that needs to be fixed. Whether it be the length or style of my hair, needing to wear make up, working out to lose weight, get a tan because my skins too pasty, etc. There has always been something about me that needed to change. 

But why? And for who's benefit, yours or mine?

End of Week 11 Dumbo Double Dare Training

Oh boy, it's only Tuesday? I could have sworn today is Thursday, well at least that's how my body feels! I had the most horrible headache last night and it hit me hard all at once. I was actually sitting at the dining table crying because my head hurt so much. My poor baby was so quiet and just staring at me from his highchair because he knew I wasn't myself last night. Luckily I got decent sleep, so that helped to get rid of my headache and I'm feeling better today.

So now we talk about training! Woohoo!

This past weeks training according to the schedule looked like this:

Tuesday: 30 minute run
Thursday: 30 minute run
Saturday: 4 miles

Good to your "self" - Week one: Engage

Today is the first of the four installments of the Be Good to Your "Self" project where I want us to explore the wonderful things that make each of us unique and perfectly us. When I was thinking about this idea, I wanted to concentrate on aspects of our bodies and our personalities and four words kept cycling through my head - engage, enjoy, embrace, empower. Not only are they all "E" words (remarkably) but they all have positive meanings to them, no negativity. That's what I wanted to promote in this whole dialogue, even when we talk about something we don't like, I want you (and me!) to talk about it in a positive light. More on that later.

So today we will talk about the first of the four words that will be the theme of each of the posts, engage. By definition, engage means: occupy, attract, or involve (someone's interest or attention). When we enter a room with people in it, what is the first thing we look at? Their face and surrounding area. That information will give you a quick read on the "climate" of the situation you are walking into because our faces show our emotions and those signs can advise you how to approach those situations. So if you walk into a room with people smiling and conversing in a lively way, it feels more welcoming and light-hearted giving you the feeling of comfort where you can engage with people. Whereas if you walk into a room with people scowling, not talking to each other or making eye contact, you feel a lot more defensive and are less likely to make the effort to engage with those around you.

End of Week 10 Dumbo Double Dare Training

Wait...what? End of Week 10? Have I been training all this time and not updating? 

Nope. 

But this is where the training schedule is for last week, I've just missed the previous 9 weeks due to misc issues and road blocks. So my training for this big race weekend is beginning now...right in the middle of the schedule. Oh yeah...here we go!

Considering how far behind I am in the training, I have augmented the prescribed miles to suit a different ramp up of miles for me.

For week 10 my training looked like this:

Tuesday: 30-45 minute run
Thursday: 30-45 minute run 
Saturday: 2 miles 4 miles (adjusted mileage for my training)
Sunday: 9.5 miles rest day planned

Be good to your "self"

I know you have done it. I do it too. You stand in front of the mirror peering at yourself and pick out all your little imperfections. "There are blackheads on my nose", "My hair is graying/or thinning", "My skin puckers on my arm here, I need to cover that up", "Holy cow, I've got a Costco sized muffin top!" You stare and stare and stare, picking yourself apart until all you see are shapes and blobs and flaws all over the place. You leave the mirror unhappy and grumpy, resolved to make changes and get rid of those imperfections so people can see the real you, the perfect you.

What I guess we don't realize is that what we see, right now, the person you see in the mirror is the real and perfectly you. It is so easy to peer at ourselves and compare our features to those that we idolize (models/movie stars) or aspire/train to be like (athletes). But that is like comparing apples to oranges, and wholly unfair. I'm not saying that you may never have a toned, sleek body like Lauren Fleshman, for example. However there is a reason why these people are famous and at the top of the game, it is for the most part, that they are genetically dispositioned that way. If we all looked like these people, then they wouldn't be special or stand out from the crowd for us to admire. It's not even something that they necessarily had done (plastic surgery, etc), it's what they were born with and learned to use and cultivate.