Transformation Tuesday, throwback Thursday, Flashback Friday, Wellness Wednesday, #Hastag I won't go on but these are just some of the terms we are seeing and reading weekly on our social media channels. There have been some incredible journeys documented on line by people across the globe who have literally changed and transformed their physical lives. They have halved in size, found a love for the gym and have managed to break free from a life of enduring over processed foods.
These stories are inspiring and will always resonate and interest people. I am always about looking at things, ideas and people in their entirety. So that the person is developing, growing and evolving as one, bringing the mind and body into play together. Life is truly brilliant, we as people have the opportunity to be and do whatever we set our minds too. We are of course born into a family, a community and enter a peer group that will shape our formative years and our identity.
Throughout life we will meet many people, some will become friends for life and some just for a short space in time, this is completely normal. Finding your own identity is a journey we stay on for life but for most it's in the mid 20s onwards where your; I am statement begins to form.
You can choose your own identity and you will have many different identities throughout life. In order to change identity though, you must shift behaviour and this is what is so difficult for people to do. With an identity shift, things will change, you will change and sometimes people will actually not be able to change and come on that journey with you. This is not a bad reflection of either, it is just life. You are on one journey and they might simply be used to you being one way and just cannot see you in this new way.
I have many female friends who have changed their physical identities from when we were teenagers to now, and some just in the last three years. This is completely normal for so many, as women we are blessed with those typical fluctuating weight issues and ever changing body types!
I myself was a lot more rotund throughout so many phases of my life, but have finally found my identity over the last 3 years and would now describe myself as slim, strong and lean. However my entire life up until 27 years I was described as a 'fine big girl'. I am tall so even if I had of been slim, I would still have been called 'big'. So I knew when I was on my own identity journey I needed to work on my own body image as much as I worked on my thighs!
Living in the body you are in today can be difficult sometimes, especially if you were bigger than you are today. Trying to tell your head that you look good, you are in fact that size and you are that way because you train hard and eat well can all be forgotten in an instant of a bad camera angle or a glimpse in that mirror under bad lighting!
Your body should never define you, but let's be real we live in a society where it does. Once large in charge- then people who don't move with you in your new identity find it difficult to see you as you.
I truly believe I am now in the body I was always meant to be in. I just didn't love myself enough or know myself to get it. When people say things like "you have lost so much weight" or my all time favourite "you used to be so fat" I kind of don't know who they are talking about.
My mind is in 2016 and I only see my identity and the me I am now.
Friends who have been on journeys or finding wellness, losing weight and gaining a better body relationship, I see them as they are now too. I never look at them and think wow they have lost so much weight. But people who don't know them in their new identity are still talking about the person they were 7 years ago. This statement for me is key; The story of our lives then, does not need to be our script of today or for tomorrow.
So stop looking back and start looking ahead with your mind, your body and who you are today.