Tag Archives: Relax

Relax. You’re Fine. Just The Way You Are.

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Barb| 22 Comments

A few weeks ago, Karen Schulman Dupuis invited me to take part in this year’s Ignite Stratford. So of course I said yes. The title of my presentation was, yes, “Relax. You’re Fine. Just The Way You Are.” A few people have asked me to post the transcript here, which, hey! Easy blog post! The videos will be up on YouTube soon and I’ll post that as well, for those of you who weren’t able to make it out last Thursday night.

Many years ago, while browsing through the Self-Help section of my favourite bookstore, I thought that if I ever wrote one of those things, I’d call it “Relax. You’re Fine. Just the Way You Are.”

Inside would be blank…

And then someone invented blogging, so I did that instead.

As I look around, I am always amazed and saddened by how dissatisfied we are with ourselves. How we enact Get Tough policies against ourselves on an almost daily basis, thinking we need to lose more weight, get more organized, be more successful. We think we need to become perfect when, really? There’s nothing wrong with who we are!

We are, all of us, miraculous.

Alive.

Feeling.

Throbbing with life.

Every single one of us is completely unique. Since the dawn of time, there has never been anyone quite like you. And there will never be another you, ever again.

I say, let that shine and to hell with those last ten pounds!

As a Reiki Practitioner, I get to touch people. And the variety of proportions of people is amazing. Upper arm to lower, arms to legs, left side to right, no one matches. No one is “in proportion”. We are all ourselves – a unique and miraculous measure of humanity.

And in the face of that, notions of correctness and perfection go right out the window.

Perfection and definitions of perfection are an arrogant and frightened attempt to corral the wild wonderfulness of life into something manageable.

Give it up!

Let the wildness and the wonder of it wash over you. Wallow in it. Drink it up and understand that perfection is everywhere. Yes, even in you!

Whether you believe that humanity evolved over time or that we each come straight from the hand of God, isn’t it strange, after your Mother’s been through 97 hours of labour to have you, to then look at her and all the ancestors who formed you and say, “No. It’s OK. I can fix this!”

It’s like looking at a sunset and telling it to try a little less orange next time. Or telling a robin that his song is too high-pitched. Or telling flower that it needs to drop a few petals.

YOU DON’T NEED FIXING!

There are so many better things you can do with your time, your limited, once in all eternity time on this earth.

This is your trip of a lifetime. Do you seriously want to spend it whipping yourself into shape? Forcing yourself up that ladder of success? Feeling bad about yourself?

There are so many more things to see and experience. Stuff to try. Trouble to get into.

Big crazy projects to launch, just to see where they go.

Friends to discover and cherish.

There are babies to snuggle.

Books to read and wine to drink.

Ideas to follow down strange and wonderful tangents for no productive reason, but because they’re interesting.

There are old people to learn from and love (and to mourn when they’re gone).

And dinners to share, during which you tell the stories of the people you’ve known and the ideas you’ve had.

I’m not saying to never make improvements or to let everything slide – humanity jsut isn’t built that way.

Lord knows, I’m a huge improver! I like to keep my house on the cleaner and tidier end of the spectrum. It suits me.

Eating healthy food and getting enough sleep lets me function better so that I can really enjoy the big adventures when they come along.

And, when I’m out walking my dog, I have been known to break into the occasional light run. It feels good and Ruffles loves it.

So jog if you want to. Cut out the junk food if it makes you feel better. Give to a good cause if you really believe in it.

But please, do these things because they bring you joy, because they’re part of the wonderful banquet of life and not because you think you’re loathesome. Because you’re not.

Believe me. You can relax. Because you’re fine. You are SO fine.

Just the way you are.

→ 22 Comments

Posted in Happy Living

Tagged Relax, self improvement

Some Gentle Advice for a Chilly Tuesday

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 8 Comments

→ 8 Comments

Posted in Simplify

Tagged breathe, Relax

The Simple Joy of Street Life

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 2 Comments

There was a huge food festival in Stratford last weekend. Alan and I volunteered to set up tents and hand out programmes.

During those four hours of handing out programmes, I had a lot of time to think. And what I thought about was the value of street life, of getting outside and just mixing with masses of humanity, seeing people in all their varied forms and weirdnesses. It’s a great antidote to the perfection and sameness we encounter in the wired world and in print.

It’s so easy in North America to become insulated, withdrawn from society and the everyday mashup of life. We contact our friends on Facebook, download movies, buy our clothes online. And all of that is amazing and can have its place, but if it lets you avoid getting out and mixing with your neighbours, you know, physically, then I think you’re missing something.

People are messy and inconvenient. They bump into you, they stop in the middle of the sidewalk for no apparent reason and you have to go around them. They dress funny. They slow you down. And that, all of it, is their value and their blessing.

They slow you down. They make you (if you allow it) think, question your assumptions, set your judgements aside.

I highly recommend getting outside and getting yourself jostled by the crowd. Smile at people. Notice the goodness in the people you see – the biker who is kind to dogs, the wildly unstylish woman with the big laugh, the people who the fashion magazines would have us believe should hide in their basements because they haven’t had themselves fixed and therefore their lives must be soooo not worth living and yet there they are, out in public, having a better time than you.

Some of you may be afraid to do this. Fears of crowds or germs or of what may happen to you. Take it slow. A weekday afternoon downtown, maybe, or a small farmer’s market, just as it’s opening. Build up to the bigger events. Smell the street food and just think about what it might be like to try it. Go at your own pace, but please go.

Go. Have fun. Watch and learn. Practice patience and cheerful observation. Learn to be amazed and delighted by the people around you. And please, leave the hand sanitizer, the cell phone and the ear buds at home.

Have you been out lately? What did it teach you?

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Happy Living

Tagged friendship, Relax

Those Last Ten Pounds Have Something to Tell You

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 12 Comments

Weight loss has to be one of the most popular topics in North America these days. And if you can give people hints, tips, sure-fire action plans for getting that hated weight off their bodies, never to return, well, popularity and riches are assuredly yours.

By now, you probably realize that I look at things just a little differently. I don’t do wholesale systems for anything, so I’m not going to start when talking about weight. Besides, it still comes down to the dreaded “eat less and exercise more” which is simple to say and kinda hard to do. And not something that I want to spend a lot of time writing about.

But what gets me is the fact that we hate our extra weight so much. We hate our bodies for putting it on and keeping it on without ever stopping to think about the process that allows this to happen. Because that process, unhealthy as it might be in excess, is kind of amazing.

Our bodies remember things that our minds know nothing of. They are tied to memories of the past, to our ancestors who lived through repeated cycles of famine, times that killed off so many people. We read that history and we think that because it was so long ago, because humanity as a whole survived, that the story was inevitable, that it doesn’t really matter. But to our ancestors, it wasn’t a story, the outcome wasn’t inevitable. It was real life, with real people and very real losses. Our bodies connect us to that past and to a community of people we will never know.

The ability to store up weight is a miracle, one that our ancestors bodies learned through trial and error. One that they passed through millennia down to us. One that, like Great Aunt Harriet’s good china, we don’t really want now.

But storing weight is how our bodies protect us. And it may be inconvenient, like small dogs barking at imagined intruders, but it is protection, it is our bodies just trying to help. And if you look at it that way, it’s maybe a little easier to deal with.

So maybe say thank you. And remember our ancestors who worked so hard just to live, whose bodies learned a trick for making survival more sure.

We are part of a continuum. A community.

And yes, we want to be healthy. And extra weight can be unhealthy. So we try to eat better and take ourselves out for a walk and learn to be a little more healthy.

But don’t hate that extra weight. Shed it if you must, but thank it first, for reminding you that you’re connected to a past you never knew, to ancestors who lived and suffered and died and made the incremental changes to give your life a chance.

→ 12 Comments

Posted in The Bigger Picture

Tagged breathe, Relax

You’ll Just Embarrass Yourself

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Barb McMahon| 3 Comments

Paolo Camera

Quick quiz: How many of you read that title and saw it as a warning or a threat?

Had I not known that I actually meant it as a reassurance, I probably would have, too. Let me explain.

So many times, I find myself wanting to get out there and do things – expand my blogs, meet new people, learn new skills. But it’s really hard, no, it’s impossible to do these new things without having moments of embarrassment. It’s embarrassing not to know what you’re doing. It’s embarrassing to make mistakes. And embarrassment? Well, it just really, really sucks, doesn’t it?

So, for far too much of the time, we let that hold us back. We don’t reach out to those new people, or sign up for that class at which we would be absolute beginners. We don’t do those things that might just get us closer to our dreams. Because we don’t want to suffer the wretched discomfort of embarrassment.

Paloetic

But here’s the thing, and here’s what my title really means. Embarrassment is just uncomfortable. It’s not fatal. And if you can learn to just weather it and leave it behind, it doesn’t even have to cause any long-term damage. It’s just embarrassment. It’s just a feeling.

How do I know this? Experience my friends, and plenty of it! I have pulled more boneheaded stunts than I will ever admit to in public. Made every mistake possible. Felt my cheeks flame and my stomach churn as a realized how dumb I’d made myself look. Just last week I took a huge misstep in the blog-building arena that made me look like a total over-eager amateur.

But I lived. And I learned. And I have quite a few experiences that I can look back on that I never would have had if I hadn’t taken a chance, hadn’t learned to keep going, to not let the embarrassment keep me from where I wanted to go.

I mean, you should have seen me last week, racing through the downtown with my camera, trying to get the perfect shot of the visiting marching band. Did I feel like an idiot? Of course I did! People were looking at me! And I’m not a professional photographer, I just have this little photo blog that not a lot of people know about. Did I let it stop me? Not this time and because of that, not next time, either.

I’m not advising that you just get out there and make an ass of yourself without doing any homework whatsoever. My homework for the various things I want to do is prodigious and on-going. I am saying don’t let “doing your homework” become code for “not doing”.

Because I also remember those times I did let my fear of embarrassment stop me. I regret those times. I remind myself of them when I hesitate and off I go. Because regret feels even worse than embarrassment.

Embarrassment is survivable. And the rewards for surviving it are huge.