The Talk Of Mothers and Daughters

Gloria Steinem once said, "Every time a woman passes a mirror and criticizes herself, there's a girl watching..." Often as a role model for the young women and girls in our life we feel powerless as we struggle with our own body issues and acceptance. Yet, we are not unaware of the impact we can have on her developing self-image.

The one thing I have learned over the years, whether it be in parenting my own daughters or in working with other women, is that our children see everything. So when we skip a meal, complain about our cellulite, compare and critique other women's bodies or say disrespectful comments about our own body, it is witnessed and taken in. These young girls watch us as we look in the mirror at our reflection, they hear us talking to others about our body dissatisfaction, they listen to how we receive compliments and are aware of how we feel about our bodies.

Knowing this, it is important the we recognize that we need to change the way we are responding to our thoughts and self talk. We need to remember that our daughters see themselves through the mirror of our eyes. What we draw attention to about them and their body sends very strong messages. What we show them we value, whether it be a certain size, an age, or a hair color for example, they begin to use as their value system. If physical appearance is important to us, it will be to them.

It means creating healthy boundaries between our own personal process with our body acceptance and what we say and how we react in these body standards. Positive self talk will be witnessed and embraced. Focus on other attributes that are not beauty related and have nothing to do with appearance, changes where you and she will place value.

It takes time, it takes awareness, but in order to change the pattern of repetitive low self-worth and body shame, we have to start somewhere. There will still be plenty of messages passed on to our daughters about their beauty and their body through media and peers, but if our conversations with them focus on all that makes them so wonderful and unique, things will begin to change. If we can model to them acceptance and grace with our body, celebration of how it serves us and appreciation of all body types, the message will be loud and clear.

So where to begin? For starters stop talking and talking and talking about the latest diet. Try to send good healthy messages about your body through words and activities. Stop the negative talk about your body or anyone else's. Listen to the way she talks about her body and have conversations with her to help her see it from a more positive perspective or to share why she feels that way. With making some of these changes in your relationship with your body and with your daughter, you will begin to see changes both in your body awareness and in her developing self-concept of her beauty and her body image.

To learn more about Body Image Coaching, visit me at www.womenwithinsight.com.

Listening to Your Own Truth

From a very early age we meet up with people who claim to know what is best for us. And, reasonably, when we were younger this was mostly true. But as we go through our life we are given ample opportunities to listen, to learn, to explore and to engage. From these opportunities we learn to listen to our truth.

The insights of others, though at times helpful, cannot compare to our own individual awareness and the answers that are within us. When we come into this world we come with our individual wisdom that is unique to us only. It is the perfect gift of energies, intuition, discernment and more. As we add life experience to this it grows more and more powerful. The more we use it and rely upon it the better it serves us.

Our truth fits only us all of the time. It does not let us down. It does not set us up. It is our universal connection. It bridges our soul's energies, our life experiences and our inner wisdom. It helps us to identify danger, to place focus on our values and to fuel our inspiration.

Our truth is one of our very strongest and most powerful tools. The better we get at using it, the more familiar we become at listening to it and the more confident we are in its authenticity the more it will serve us. As our consciousness grows and expands, so does our truth.

Blessings, Lisa

I Have The Perfect Teacher

I am counting my blessings. I am filled with gratitude. I am celebrating the beautiful lessons that I am given each and every day. All this is presented to me by my perfect teacher.

I have had many different mentors in life. I have read an unimaginable amount of books by the wisest of healers and spiritual visionaries. I have had the glorious opportunity to practice many different ways to connect more and more fully to my soul's calling.

Over time I have learned that my perfect teacher insures that the very lesson I need to be learning, the very insight I can find within myself and the very longing my soul is reaching to is the lesson of the day.

What is the best lesson my perfect teacher has taught me? All the situations and circumstances of my life, the big and the small, the powerful and the insignificant, are there to teach me exactly what I need to be learning.

Who is this perfect teacher? How is it that they are so accurate and timely? My perfect teacher is my life. This beautiful, changing, expanding and evolving life! My life makes certain that my path is crossed with people who will bring into my day offerings and needs, challenges and trials, wisdom and grace, all to enrich the experience of what my life lesson is in the moment.

My life is my classroom. The situations, the relationships, the experiences and more all add to the day's lesson. It is within this classroom that I practice patience, love, awareness, presence, gratitude, and compassion. It is within this classroom that I learn my strengths and my weaknesses. My teacher makes sure that lessons are balanced and full.

I make sure to fill my heart with gratitude each day for my teacher. I awake every day with the honoring of all the possibilities that will surely come my way. I remember that this perfect teacher has brought me so far down this amazing path, even when I had my doubts or dared to have fear. My teacher stayed true to me. My trust is steadfast that my life has all the answers that I need to be my fullest, my most brilliant, my best Self.

Blessings, Lisa

The Opportunity of Risk

Life will bring to us opportunities to practice risk taking. Healthy, pondered and explored, experience backed risk taking can lead to two different obvious outcomes; failure or success. But there is one other outcome that we sometimes forget about. Taking a risk may end in results we had not considered and may lead us to even greater and more expansive possibilities.

Taking risks also gives us the opportunity to practice utilizing our personal power and wisdom. Bringing these energies to the moment is often what helps us move from a place of stuck to one of action. Risk taking will push us out of our comfort zone and into unknown territory. It will introduce us to new emotions, behaviors and tasks. All of which we will then need to take time adjusting to.

Taking risks brings the opportunity to be more alive within our life. We find that the endorphins that we experience propel us forward. We become more observant, we bring our awareness to the new perspective and we listen more closely to the messages being sent our way. Sometimes when taking a risk presents itself, we cannot see clearly into the next moment, we have to trust our previous experiences. The cloud that surrounds our uncertainty is unnerving, but to not take the risk feels even more unsettling.

Risk taking is often necessary. How we approach this opportunity will help direct the energies we bring, the insights we share, the receptivity we have and the courage we can summon. It takes a daring moment to step into risk. But to avoid all risk only means we are not living life fully. We are compromising. We are not expanding and growing, learning or evolving. Change will always hold a certain degree of risk. But without change we stay small and do not invite our soul to the day. We have different levels to our consciousness and within these levels are the gems to bring to our journey. We uncover new gifts of our passion. We find deeper truths. We explore and release more of what is not serving us.

I would rather make mistakes in my life than remain the same. I am wiling to fail to gain the insight and lessons that await me. I have to trust that in pushing myself, I will learn more about who I am and what I can do. Dancing with the opportunity of risk empowers me and keeps me awake!

Blessings, Lisa