I think most people do a bit of idle Facebooking (Yes.  I did just make that word up.) in the mornings, just to see what friends and family got up to overnight. While scrolling through my feed one morning not long ago, dropping a "like" here, and a random comment there, I came across a meme featuring a large woman riding a bike, clearly competing in an athletic competition, seriously intent, and completely into what she was doing.  The wording on the picture was about encouraging people more than we criticize, which was all well and good, but what struck me most about this picture was the woman's obvious commitment to what she was doing.  Her focus and dedication absolutely moved me.  I wondered about her journey, how she got there, and honestly, how I could get there. 

Turns out the woman in the picture runs a website for plus-sized female athletes, featuring them in all of their triumphs and trials. Me being a plus-sized woman who wants to get more seriously into biking and hiking, but have always been rather intimidated both by my size and my clumsiness, was intrigued.  As I read article after story after blog post about these remarkable female athletes, pursuing their goals without regard to anyone else's preconceived notions of what they should be, I started to realize that I am probably my own biggest critic when it comes to my fitness goals. (Well, okay that and whenever I decide to exercise after work on a regular basis, my son suddenly finds things to do at night so he can't possibly watch his sister while I go to the gym/track/whathaveyou, doesn't really help either, but I digress.) I am also far from alone in this ongoing self negating.

The comments on most articles about any woman that is not very small or thin bear me out on this.  Although there are plenty of comments from men, which is almost to be expected, the comments from women range from hateful (the usual amount of shaming comments) to heartbreaking.  The number of women that hate themselves, and anyone else for that matter, for not conforming to an image very few people can meet has reached epidemic proportions.  Dear GOD, don't let it be an article or post about self acceptance.  If a man between the ages of 17 - 35 can't get a boner by looking at your picture, you had better not even THINK about self acceptance.  All of this will be hidden underneath a layer of barely concealed contempt, dressed in snark, and condescendingly labeled "concern for your health".

What so many of these keyboard critics don't realize is that all of the most important things about a person's life start with their perception of themselves.  Anything that starts with self hatred is destined to end in failure, and self hatred starts where inability to accept that not everyone is going to look exactly alike begins.  This is not to say that everyone shouldn't strive to be the best possible version of themselves, so much as it is reminding them that no two people are meant to look alike, and to decide for themselves what that best person looks like.  Of course there are certain industries that thrive on personal insecurity; our job is to develop a healthy enough sense of self to let these industries cater to those they may.  We can always opt out of the get thin quick schemes and harmful nonsense diet peddling.

Loving yourself first means seeking out and prioritizing what's RIGHT about yourself, rather than obsessing over flaws.  I mean your real flaws, as decided by YOU, not dictated by a popular media that has an agenda, and a product to sell.  Learning to love yourself BEFORE you begin to make changes puts you in the right mindset to stick to whatever plans you make to  change what you feel needs changing, be it looks, finances, career or location.  Everyone has at least one thing about themselves worth loving; if you don't know what that is, there are probably one too many people in your life whose favorite form of entertainment is making sure they let other people know precisely what is wrong with them, never mind the fact that their gleeful negativity is the largest part of the problem. But I digress.

By developing a healthier attitude towards yourself, you improve your outlook on most other aspects of your life, which in turn gives you the proper foundation for dealing with whatever comes your way after that.  People that love themselves first develop a sort of resilience that carries them through failures, disappointments and thornier issues, all the way out to creating better habits, completed goals, and triumph.

Like that woman in the picture, who has completed marathons, triathlons, and is an avid competitor in sports.  None of this could have been done without first loving herself enough to ignore the negativity, and pursue what SHE was interested in. I've always strived to be more of an encourager.  It's nice to know that my thinking goes along the correct lines.

I want to be like her when I grow up.

It happened in the middle of a very long day, a little over 20 years ago.

I was 19, all ideals and bluster and lofty opinion.  She was also 19, with an infant son, living at home, attending school and looking for work.  We had spent the better part of the day on the job search, and had observed some other girls with their children while we were out applying for jobs at a nearby mall.  They were hard not to notice, as they weren't wearing much, their children seemed oddly overdressed, and their conversations could be heard from 20 feet away.  We said little at the time, just observed them quickly and looked away, so as not to be noticed, noticing them.  Back at her house later that afternoon, the discussion turned to the girls at the mall, and others like them.

I remember launching into a tirade about how I wouldn't have allowed myself to be caught having a child with a man who wasn't going to be around, and how I would never stoop to being on welfare, and how I would conduct myself in public if my child were acting out, and all of the kinds of things you say when you are 19, have no children and in all honesty, really do think you know everything.

I remember her sitting quietly through my ranting, then fixing me with a steady look.  


"Well that's good for you, but everybody ain't you."

I stopped talking (rare for me), and had to think about that.  What made me think that I knew so much that what was good for me had to be good for everybody?  Did I really have all the answers, or was I trying to separate myself from a situation I could have easily been in?  Or was there something deeper at play?

I am now 23 years and two children removed from that warm Fall day.  Over the years, I have had to remind myself of that statement from time to time, as I found myself getting all judgy about some person or situation.  I was reminded of this most recently when a controversy erupted over a Facebook photo posted by a mother of three who is also a fitness trainer.  It is a photo of the woman with her three children, all one year apart, in a revealing workout outfit, with a caption above her hear which reads "What's your excuse?"   According to the woman in the photo, it was meant to be motivational.  The picture didn't bother me, but the caption stood out, as it was obviously meant to.  At the time, I couldn't figure out what bothered me so much about the statement.  A week or so later, it finally occurred to me.

"Everybody ain't you."

There is nothing positive or motivational about suggesting that someone is making excuses.  It is an accusatory phrase that we use with children when chores or homework isn't done, or they have gotten into trouble they can't possibly explain.  We probably shouldn't even use it then.  But looking at the comments section of many news stories about the post, some people see it as motivating people either to prove her wrong, or to do whatever they need to do to look like her.  Then again, the comments section of newspaper articles can be a sycophantic minefield of their own, especially when issues specific to women and body image are covered, but I digress...

As a society, we have developed a deep need to seek fault in others.  If we can find a reason to look down on someone else, then maybe our faults aren't so bad.  I mean you might be a pathological liar, cheater, terrible with money, etc, but at least you are not "______". (fill in the blank) Then, if we can hide our snarky criticism underneath a cloud of "concern" for the other person, we can even manage to make ourselves feel slightly better about the fact that we have just passed unfair judgement on someone.  Telling someone something "for their own good", usually never is, and is only stated to make the teller feel better about themselves for having said it.  And thanks to the anonymity of the internet, being nasty and judgmental is easier, and more readily spread across a wider spectrum of forums.

What would our world be like if we shifted our focus from ourselves to others?  If instead of holding ourselves up as examples of what others should aspire to, we actually bothered to speak with (and actually LISTEN to!)  them to understand and address their challenges.  If rather than expecting people to get to where we are, and quickly, we would meet them where they are, then bring them up to where they would like to be, at THEIR pace, not ours.  If we could move, as Robert Fulghum once stated from "Look at ME" to "I am seeing YOU".


What if instead of judging people using ourselves as a yardstick, we actually bothered to give them the benefit of the doubt that there might be more to their story than we know?  What if we actually thought of people as people, not examples of what could possibly be wrong about ourselves?  What if we saw people as individuals, rather than manifestations of our own insecurities?  Would we be less judgmental then?

What if.....

What if.....