Imagine you’ve accomplished something really amazing. It’s taken months (maybe years) of hard work, sacrifice, and willpower. Now imagine that despite your achievement, you still feel like you could have – should have – done more, tried harder, been better. You should be happy now, but there’s something missing.
Remember our friend Laurie? Since having weight loss surgery last fall, she’s dropped 135 pounds. That’s incredible! She has worked hard to get here, changing the way she eats, spending loads of time in the gym, and even running her first 5K! Laurie has so very much to be proud of.
And she IS proud of herself, make no mistake. But there are times when she wonders when the final happiness will come, when she will be satisfied. As we were talking the other day, she asked me, “When will we be happy?
This was my response:
We will NEVER be happy. There are entire industries making sure that we will NEVER be satisfied with our bodies. The diet industry. Pharmaceutical companies. Make-up. Clothing. If we started liking ourselves, what would they do?
Every year, companies spend billions of dollars reminding us how we are not good enough. We are not pretty enough, and we sure as heck aren’t thin enough. And every year, we spend billions of dollars chasing the dream of perfection.
News flash: There is no such thing as perfection. And if you spend your time, energy, and money pursuing it, you’re going to end up overwhelmed, exhausted, and broke.
But you CAN be happy. You can be happy right at this moment, at this weight, with stretch marks on your belly, with cellulite on your thighs, with flabby arms and thick ankles (if you have those things). The secret isn’t in some diet book or weight loss pill. Are you ready for the secret?
Choose it. Choose happiness. Choose to love your body right now. You don’t have flaws – you have body parts. They look different than supermodel body parts, they look different than my body parts. They’re yours, and you can choose to love them right now.
You can choose to turn away from the “you’re not good enough yet but if you give us some money there might be hope for you yet” messages of the diet and beauty industries. You can choose to compare yourself to the person YOU were yesterday, a month ago, a year ago – and you can choose to not compare yourself to anyone other than yourself.
I don’t believe for one second that we will never be happy. I believe that a lot of very rich people want us to believe that, so they can keep getting richer. We can choose to stop giving them our money because we don’t feel good enough. Buy makeup, buy cute clothes! But do it because you love yourself, not because you are unhappy with how you look.
There isn’t a final happiness. There is just happiness every day, if we choose it.
It’s a struggle to truly embrace these ideas and make them reality. There are days when Laurie is so proud of herself, when she feels strong and powerful and accomplished… and happy. I wish more days for her like that. I wish every day for her like that. And I wish it for me, and I wish it for you.
