Taking Stock

Boy, this year has gone faster than I can possibly imagine! It has been a good year with lots of changes, lots of challenges, and lots of progress. There were also tremendous amounts of support and encouragement.

I spent quite a while talking yesterday to a dear friend, who has also had her struggles with self-esteem and weight issues. It occurred to me yesterday that it doesn’t matter whether it is 10 pounds or 300 pounds, the self-esteem struggles are massive. It is so easy to look at the “beautiful” people surrounding us in the media – to compare ourselves, and to come up short. So many of us are looking for a perfect IDEAL – and when we don’t hit that mark, we call ourselves failures, and beat ourselves up.

We fail to realize that different cultures – and different time periods – had very, very different IDEALS. In this country alone, all the way through the 1940’s and even into the 1950’s – the IDEAL woman was curvy. Sometime in the 1960’s, a very small model changed everything – and suddenly every woman wanted to be Twiggy. In some cultures, wealth is measured by weight (the bigger person has enough to eat, so therefore he or she must be wealthy).

Unfortunately – we often use one standard to measure ourselves – and a completely different standard to look at other people. Think about it. What happens when you meet a new person? I ask questions – find out interesting things. I get a sense of who the person is – what their values are – if we have anything in common. I may decide that this is someone I would like to know better – or sometimes, I may decide that I’m really not interested in anything more than being a casual acquaintance. But I do not ever remember making that decision on what they look like, or whether they are carrying a few extra pounds – or a few pounds too little. If I looked at other people with the critical eye I use on myself, people would consider me shallow, and they certainly wouldn’t want to get closer. (Yes, it’s sad, but there ARE people like that in our society. The media encourages that mentality. But the people who mean the most to me are definitely not that kind of person.) I don’t ever want anyone to think that of me – so, if I’m honest, I can’t be that kind of person EVEN WITH MYSELF.

So, my goal, as we close this year, is to be a little kinder to myself – a little gentler with the criticism. And a better person for it.