‘Santosa’, self-appreciation, and how not to throw away time.

I saw this post on Pinterest about a year ago, and it struck me with such a sense of ‘oh my gosh, of course!’ that it almost knocked me over. This kind of statement is glaringly obvious in retrospect, but like many seemingly simple things it needed to be pointed out at the right time. It has subsequently been woven into my life and reinforced by other such realizations, and I hope what I write to you is helpful!

I work in the fitness industry, and like most of our culture it is hugely focused on physical appearance and abilities, whether it be lifting heavier, acrobat-like yoga poses, or attaining off your ‘perfect gym/beach body’. With the infinite diversity that exists in the world it is completely unreasonable to expect yourself to be equal to or better than anyone else you meet, but we try anyway. Why is that?

The short answer is money made from product advertising, but the long answer is much more complicated. There are many external and internal factors that influence why people feel the need to look or behave like someone else, and I am happy to set aside time to talk about those with you if you like, but since there are already many great books dedicated to the topic I’ll stick to my blog post and leave some recommendations for further reading at the bottom.

Any time you see someone you feel you want to emulate, chances are you need to purchase a product or service to make it happen. Clothes, makeup, a gym membership, a book or video. People who have something to sell know this, and they have become masters at driving business based on making you feel somehow inadequate.

Think about it – if you loved yourself just the way you are, would you spend as much money on things that change/enhance your image or performance? Probably not. Each dollar that you spend isn’t simply money out of pocket, it’s the time you spent to earn that money. If you make $20/hr, something that is $100 is equal to 5 hours of your life. Is it really worth the time you will never get back?

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” -Henry David Thoreau

Enter Santosa – a Sanskrit word that means ‘contentment’, something that is not to be confused with complacency.

Santosa means appreciating your current situation, body, abilities etc., while still dreaming and working towards goals. Santosa creates a solid foundation to leap from, and can save you a lot of grief that comes from financial stress, physical injuries from over-doing it at the gym, and general unhappiness that comes from not feeling good enough already. It will help determine what you really want to spend your money/time/effort on.

It sounds like a miracle word, but the miracle only occurs when you commit to being patient with the process. There will be plenty of times you feel Santosa’s influence improve your decisions and attitude, and there will be times that you completely forget about it and your old habits hijack your thoughts and actions. The trick is to not get upset with your lapses in judgement, don’t beat yourself up over all the things you should have done differently in the past and give up, because time keeps moving and your future self will thank you for working so hard now. Trust me, you WILL look back with gratitude if you stick with the tough part now.

To bring it back to my inspiration, “appreciate others’ beauty without questioning your own”, means that you don’t have to be like that person over there to be happy. I spent many years and many tears feeling inadequate in the face of comparison. I just couldn’t be like all the people I saw around me.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Looking back, my failure to be ‘like them’ IS COMPLETELY REASONABLE. I am not those people, I can never be those people, because they are not me. They do not have my genetics, or life experiences, or imagination. They are their own people, and the only person I can be is me because everyone else is already taken.

I have begun the difficult process of freeing myself from advertising influences that tell me I need to be different or better or similar to whatever image they are selling. I am working hard to let go of the jealously and unhappiness that comes from trying to compare myself to someone who will never be like me, because that is not useful to me. I am instead practicing the art of Santosa, contentment, so that I may be able to appreciate and learn from other people without questioning my own worth.

It’s often difficult, tedious work. But it’s also a process that has revealed riches within myself that I never ever dreamed I could possess, and it’s taken time for me to claim them. I hope that this can help you can discover your own unique value, and I would love to hear your thoughts. ❤

Extra Reading:

Taking The Leap by Pema Chodron (You can also get the same content in audiobook format with Getting Unstuck, and Pema’s sense of humour really shines.)

Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg

Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell

The Beauty Myth by Naiomi Wolf (this one is INTENSE and will probably make you angry, but it’s worth a skim at the very least. 😉

Owning Your Identity

“I was once afraid of people saying ‘who does she think she is?’ But now I have the courage to stand and say, ‘this is who I am.'” – Oprah Winfrey

It’s been a long time coming, and certainly I have a long way to go yet, but after seeing this quotation from Oprah it struck me that I have been spending far too much of my time worrying that people will hear what I say or see what I do and think that I’m not ‘qualified’ in some way. It’s a mindset that lurks behind the innocent disguise of wanting to ‘be prepared’ or ‘well informed’ before you make any statements or movements towards big goals. It’s a sneaky undermining of your acceptance and use of your experiences and knowledge that keeps you from feeling ‘ready’ to make the leap into greatness. Well as Amy Poehler said, “Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it.”

My new mantra is ‘this is who I am’. Each and every day, I will own my experiences, my knowledge, my personality, my feelings. Alongside my daily gratitude practice I will add this mantra, and I will embrace not only who I want to be, but who I already am.

I’ve got this, and I think you do too.

Fear, singing, and letting go of the rope swing.

Mexico, 2009. I was on a family trip with the extended in-laws that included an ATV day tour with a stop for lunch at a river where it flows under a bridge. Not a huge bridge, but big enough. Attached to the bridge, adjacent to one of the concrete pilings, was a rope swing. The rope swing.

You can’t see it, but the rope was tied to the bridge just in front of the concrete piling, so in order to use the swing you had to jump out on a bit of an arc, dropping into the water just as you reach the peak of the arc.

It wasn’t a complicated maneuver, and I’m not afraid of heights or water, but for some reason on that day I could not bring myself to swing on that rope, despite desperately wanting to. I stood on the rocks, rope in hand, trying my hardest to will my body to jump. My mind said “Yes! Look at all the fun people are having, look at how easy it appears, how the little kids and older adults and everyone in between is doing it, I can do it too!” But my body was frozen, absolutely solid, and would not budge. I would think, “What’s the worst that could happen?” and the menacing little voice in the back of my head muttered:”You’ll hold on for too long and hit the rocks, or you won’t jump out far enough and you’ll hit the rocks. No one else has had a problem, but you will.” And that little voice kept on listing all the ways that I could make a mess of it and how bad it would be when I did.

In the end, defeated by my own treacherous self, I let go of the rope and climbed down. The people that had been watching my struggle sighed in disappointment, a tiny echo of what I felt inside. I spent the rest of the trip beating myself up over my cowardice, and fantasizing about having another chance to conquer my fear and enjoy that damned rope swing. For years after I would imagine flying back to Mexico, renting an ATV, and in a cloud of dust and determination, returning to the river and swinging on that swing like I knew I could.

Of course I didn’t fly back, but the experience stayed with me. Fast forward a few years, and the effect of the rope swing debacle has matured into something more useful – a resolution to stop getting in my own way. It has resulted in numerous small occasions where I pushed a little outside of my comfort zone and actually enjoyed myself.

This past fall I attended a voice workshop hosted by my yoga teacher, Asia Nelson, featuring a world-renowned opera singer, Kimberly Barber. She taught us about breath control, voice amplification, and how to be kind to your voice so that many hours of teaching and talking wouldn’t damage it. As part of the workshop, each of us had to sing a song of our choosing in front of everyone else, and Kimberly would give us individual feedback. That’s right, sing in front of a group of 20+ peers, and a video camera.

Due to a lot of small-scale decisions to be confident I don’t fear speaking in front of groups, and I like to sing, but my singing usually happens in the car, the shower, or the kitchen when no one but the cats and I are home. Like many people, the thought of singing in front of others induces pure dread into my heart and makes me shaky. I obsessed for weeks over the song I would choose and which part I would sing and what were the worst-case-scenarios if I sucked worse than I thought. I knew what was happening, so I prepared my short piece and vowed to go at the beginning so that I didn’t have to be nervous for any longer than possible. (I’m an eat-your-broccoli-first type of person.)

When the workshop finally arrived, and the moment came when Kimberly asked who was going to sing first … I froze. I sat in my seat, staring like a deer in headlights, and didn’t budge. I could almost feel the rope swing in my hands, see the river, feel the people watching. A battle of wills RAGED inside of me for what felt like minutes, and before I could move another broccoli-first classmate beat me to it. She got up, she sang, and she didn’t die. I watched, entranced, as Kimberly’s cues made her voice louder and clearer. She finished, we applauded, and it was time.

I launched out of my seat with enough force that I pushed it back a little and marched into the center of the circle. I introduced myself, then made a joke about wanting to have my turn at the beginning so that I would stop having to nervous-pee, then immediately regretted saying it which made me want to melt into the floor. Kimberly asked me to sing, and with a little quaking but without further ado, I did.

She asked me to sing it a few times at various speeds, do silly-looking facial movements and breath exercises, I forgot the tune at one point and my nervousness didn’t really let up, but by the end her cues really did help my voice get stronger and easier. Before I knew it my turn was up – I sat back down, and nearly passed out from excitement.

I had grabbed the rope and jumped! I felt positively elated and almost floated all the way home after it was all over, I felt like I could accomplish anything!

After thinking about it for a while, I’m convinced I really can. There are still situations that I haven’t mastered yet, but as those rope-swing moments appear in my life I will no longer allow myself to get in my own way, because I know what it feels like to truly lose an opportunity to do something great, or fun. I encourage you all to trust yourselves and take chances on things you want. Ask, what’s the worst that can happen? How likely is it to happen? What will I learn from it if I do fail? Is the worst-case really worse than never trying in the first place?

Then grab your rope and swing.

 

Imagine you are 12 years old

Recently I have had the pleasure of spending a few hours with a smart, spunky 12-year old named Margaret. Her mom, Kim, signed her up so they could spend some time together doing classes and since Kim trains with me twice a week already, she asked me to help Margaret get comfortable with the gym and working out. They have been delightful hours filled with silliness and laughter, and our initial workout ended up being one of the most profound sessions I have ever had.

The thing about mentoring a 12 year old girl in any capacity is that you end up contemplating the significance of every single thing you’re going to say, and how your words will impact the way she thinks and develops. This is especially true when you are responsible for helping to foster a healthy perception of her body and fitness. I’m sure that everyone reading this has struggled with insecurities about their looks or abilities, and to have the chance to make a young girl feel strong, confident, and empowered makes you want to try extra hard to give her a good head start.

After we finished our session and I was on my way home, it hit me. All of the things I was so careful not to say around Margaret because I didn’t think they were going to contribute to her healthy self-awareness are stories that I, and many women, tell ourselves and each other ever day.

Working your butt so that it looks good without appreciating how it helps you step up or jump or squat or back-bend; working your arms so that they don’t jiggle and look wide in pictures instead of being strong and able to push/pull you up or easily carry heavy things; eating to look slim instead of feeding your body wholesome things it can use to make healthy new cells and create energy you can use to accomplish wonderful goals.

We have come away from appreciating all of the incredible things that our bodies do for us on a daily basis and embracing the unique qualities that make us who we are – instead we have gotten good at comparison and finding aspects of ourselves that ‘need to be improved’. In doing that we attract others who view us and themselves in the same light and we don’t see the examples or get the support we need to break that cycle. Our unhappy selves look upon other happy, confident people jealously and with contempt.

I have an idea: the next time you get dressed, go to the gym, eat a meal, or generally think about yourself imagine that you have the opportunity to help that happy little 12-year old inside you live a life where she doesn’t look down upon herself and instead feels smart, confident, capable, and beautiful. It will take work to begin (think of how many years you’ve been in the habit of doing the opposite,) but once you start you will be amazed at how much better you will feel, and you will be able to keep it up. Eventually you will transfer it to others, and attract those who value themselves and you for the qualities that make each and every one of us who we are.

Am I saying that you should stop working towards goals? Nope. But evaluate what those goals are, why you have them. And most importantly practice ‘santosha’, contentment with who you are. Contentment, not complacency. Only when you accept yourself for who you are in the present moment will you start to see the happiness, progression, and success that you want. 🙂