Love Yourself to Better Health

[00:00] Bobbi: Welcome to UnYielded:  Thriving No Matter What. I am your host, Bobbi Kahler. Your life is your story to write, no one else’s. This show will empower you to be the author of your own life. Let’s pick up the pen and let’s get started.

[00:19] Bobbi: Welcome back, everyone. I am so excited to be introducing a new concept for the Rise Thrive portion of the podcast. As you know, every Monday I share a short monologue or mini log, if you will, on a topic to help you in your inner game and your outer game in life.

Now, recently, I had the idea to open this up to guest experts. I’m excited about this because I think it’s a way to add more value for you. This way, we can bring in more voices in other important areas. Now, I’ll still be doing Rise and Thrives as well, but I’ll just be adding some other voices to the mix, and I hope that you enjoy that. On that note, please shoot me an email with your thoughts on the new idea at bobbi@unyielded.net. And of course, that will be in the Show notes.

So I’m excited to announce that today is our first guest expert. As you know, if you’ve heard my story, I had a health crisis back in 2003 that nearly took my life. It took me ten years to experience a full recovery. Because of this, I firmly believe that our health is the most important thing for us to protect. So, of course, I wanted to have an outside perspective and outside expertise on what I believe is this very important topic. And that’s why I’ve invited Pam Sherman, an expert fitness coach, to share some of her expertise with us. And you can learn more about Pam on her website, www.theperfectbalance.guru. And that link will be in the Show notes as well.

So when Pam shared with me her topic for today, I instantly loved it and I connected with it. It’s about loving ourselves to health. It reminded me of back when I was recovering from my illness and I was, I don’t know, two plus years into my recovery, I had gained weight because I’d been confined to bed so much. And I was complaining to my doctor, Dr. Barb, about it and about how much I hated my body and the fact that I’d gained weight. And she listened to me. And then when I finally finished, she looked at me and she said, “You know, I get it. And, you know, here’s a thought. You might try loving your body for keeping you alive.” And then she just sat there and looked at me.

And I have to tell you, that was a paradigm shifter.

So I hope that you enjoy this new aspect to the series. And without any further ado, here is Pam.

[02:48] Pam Sherman: Today I want to talk about loving yourself to health. As a personal trainer and group exercise instructor, I’ve worked with hundreds of women over the last 26 years.

More often than not, they tell me what they hate. I turn it around immediately, and I say, well, what do you like? And it’s very hard for women to tell me what they like about themselves. They have an easy time telling me what they hate.

I really want to approach your health coming from love instead of hate. Now, this is very hard because most and I’m going to talk to the women here most women take excellent care of everyone else in their lives their families, their pets, their partners, their home, their jobs. And they don’t even put themselves on their priority list.

When you love yourself, I’m going to say love yourself to health. You’re going to focus on you. That could be a scary thought, because it’s easier to take care of everyone else than it is to take care of yourself. Focusing on you.

What does that look like? It looks like putting yourself on your calendar every day, prioritizing things that make you happy. It could be coffee with a friend. It could be making time for exercise. Hint, hint. Yes, please do that. It could be taking time to meditate or to take a bath at the end of the day.

None of that is selfish. It’s actually self care. And I’m going to go back to the airplane. When you’re on a flight, they say, put the oxygen mask on you first. The same goes for your health, focusing on you first before you focus on anyone else.

I know when I take care of myself, I’m a nicer mom. I’m a nicer partner. I feel better in my head. Helps with any anxiety that I might have. It’s an all around mood booster for the day.

Secondly, there is nothing good that comes from hate. We all have one body to go through life in. I don’t want you to spend one more moment hating any part of it.

In fact, I’m giving you homework. After you’re done listening to this, I would like you to go into the mirror, look at yourself in the eyes, and say, I love you. And I want you to say it in the voice that you use to your pets or to your kids or even to your parents.

You would only say, I love you with kindness. And if you want to make the baby voice, I love you. Oh, you’re so beautiful. We all talk to our pets like that, so why don’t we give ourselves that same love?

Many women have a hate, hate relationship with our body because they don’t fit into these ridiculous standards that we have in the United States for women. You shouldn’t have any wrinkles. You shouldn’t have any extra fat. You shouldn’t have any extra anything.

Ladies, these bodies, these old gals have seen us through so many hard times. They’ve seen us through probably deaths of loved ones. If you’re a mom, you’ve given birth, which is amazing. They’ve seen you go through life’s difficulties and yet here they still are, standing strong for us every single day.

I want you to love yourself to health. Write in your journal the things that you are grateful for about yourself and your health. Let’s take extra pounds out of the equation. What do you love about yourself?

In fact, I would love it if you made a list. What would your best friend say about you? We are the first to tell everyone how great our kids are, our friends are. What about if you gave yourself that same pep talk and you started every day with love for yourself?

That’s my message today. Love yourself to healthy.