Most complexities in our life stem out from never being able to accept our body. And this leads to umpteen psychological and physical dilemmas, or vice versa. Unfortunately, there is no single formula that can help overcome this nemesis, except for you.
Acceptance is the only cure
Psychologists over the world believe that all diseases stem from a lack of self-approval. Loving and approving yourself is like creating a space of safety, trust, and acceptance within you.
Creating an organised mind will enable your body weight to normalise leaving you happy and healthy. Thus psychiatrist Ajit Mehta says, “Self-approval and self-acceptance are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives”.
Awareness is key
Many of us shy away from the real problem, which most often is not the fact that we don’t love our bodies, but the fact we hold on to a pattern buried deeply within us. This pattern could be anything—a psychological dilemma, a way of living and/or an inferiority complex. To nip this in the bud, you first need be aware of your pattern.
“Many people think going to a psychiatrist will open a Pandora’s box of complexities, thus never try it. Others think they have finally reached a stage where they want to change their body and look different, so why drift from their current goal? They do not realise how unaware of themselves they really are,” says Delhi-based psychiatrist, Shruti Sinha.
“We need to notice that we are much more than our mind. We may think our mind is running the show, but that is only because we have trained our mind to think in this way,” she adds.
The mind is a tool for us to use any way we wish. To activate this tool in the way we wish, we need to do a bit of self-introspection and let go off negative thoughts, restrictive habits and complexes.
“Once we start seeing these aspects, we become aware and that’s when half the battle is won. We accept the fact that we wish to change. You can then move on to the second aspect, which is how you plan on going about this change,” she adds.
Welcome change
We all wish to change something about ourselves—the way we think, the way we talk and more than often the way we look. But how many of us really can go about it? Well, after having many such ‘I want to change moments’ have you still failed? That’s because perhaps you don’t know how to change!
“All theory is useless unless we know how to apply it”, explains Sinha. She says that most often we try to break the pattern we have in mind and face some problem, which deters us from moving ahead.
This is the time we need to work on ourselves, which is to trust the intelligence within us and allow our inner guidance to determine our future. If you gently persist and each day take baby steps towards your goal, in a few days when you look back, things would have changed and you will manage to break the pattern and the deterrent.
Why not think positive?
Renowned writer, Louise Hay in her umpteen books on self-healing talks about how you alone are responsible for your surroundings and the way your body shapes up. She claims the universe totally supports us in every thought we choose to think and believe.
According to her, “Our subconscious mind accepts whatever we choose to believe, which means what you believe about yourself and about your life becomes the evitable truth for you.” Since you have unlimited choices to think about and choose from, then why not think positive?
For example instead of saying, “I am so fat I will never lose weight or I hate my body,” say, “I am losing weight and I will continue to do so or I accept my body as it is and am thankful for it”. Remember that the only thing that we are dealing with is a thought and a thought can be changed.
You are the power
We are all responsible for all our experiences. Every aspect we think, do or create determines our future. We are all packed with infinite healthy and unhealthy patterns, but we all have one thing in common, the power we hold and inherit within us: The power called ‘You’.
Thus, in order to love our body and mind we must be willing and for that we need nothing, but to follow the S4 Rule: self-introspection, self-acceptance, self-approval and last, but not the least self indulgence.