I’m having a difficult time thinking about, speaking about, or writing about anything other than what is happening in our country today. For the sake of you, my friend who chooses to read my words on mindfulness and health (for which I am so grateful), I will stick to what I am an expert on while praying you are able to discern where these similarities are playing out in many other systems in our culture and how you are able to be more mindful moving forward.

 

I am considered to be quite the anti-fitness-industry, fitness industry. The main problem in the fitness industry, in my humble opinion, is the constant focus on symptoms. The diet/fitness industry is a sixty billion dollar per year industry designed to profit off of your failure.

 

If it were to work, the industry would be down in profits the subsequent years. The real kicker comes when you are made to believe that the system didn’t work because you didn’t do it right, try hard enough, or don’t have what it takes. It is a broken system. No, it’s a system working exactly how it was intended. It’s a system that needs completely dismantled.

 

You exchange your power when you look to outside sources to fix an inside problem. You exchange your power when you focus on the symptoms and byproducts of a problem. You reclaim your power when you turn inward. You reclaim your power when you get down to treating the roots.

 

Focusing on the symptoms leaves you constantly spinning your wheels, fighting to manage your body, ignoring your mind, and working really hard to please others and meet impossible expectations. Reclaiming your power looks like mending the relationship with your mind and body so they are no longer the enemy. Reclaiming your power looks like creating new standards.

 

Whether in my group coaching or working one-on-one we always begin with a discussion about mind traps. Mind traps are those ruts your mind gets into. Mind traps keep you focusing on the symptoms and byproducts keeping you in the same cycles and patterns. Those cycles and patterns might look like being on or off the bandwagon or losing and gaining weight over and over again. While there are seven that we discuss throughout my work there is one that I have seen most predominant in our culture regarding nearly every topic being heavily discussed: the shoulds.

 

The shoulds will make it really hard to good good about yourself. The shoulds are like living under a tyranny. They’re inflexible, authoritarian, joyless rules for thinking, feeling, and behaving that we subject ourselves to. This mind trap leads you straight into guilt and shame over unmet expectations, anger and resentment when you don’t live up to your expectations, and the ever popular endless comparison of how we feel on the inside with how everyone else appears to feel on the outside. The shoulds are what you are burying yourself under.

 

In my business this looks like: I should (or need to) lose x amount of pounds. My first response to that should, no matter how big or small that x is a simple question: why? Why should you lose x amount of pounds. Sometimes the initial responses are scrapping the surface and touching on other symptoms things improving aching joints, decreasing medications, and feeling an overall improved energy. Then we begin to get down to the roots. The deep down things you may be looking for: confidence, self-worth, mind/body attunement, acceptance, love… the things we long for deep down in our bones. We can get down to the roots by dissecting the shoulds. For example if your should is: I should lose 25 pounds. Start journaling why and get really, really deep with it until you’ve found that source. Is it because you’ll feel confident? Great. What does confident mean to you? How do you define confidence for yourself? Let’s say confidence to you means trusting yourself, trusting you ability, trusting your instincts.

 

The next time you start shoulding all over yourself about losing that 25 pounds and how you should be able to control your food and how you should be working out more and how you should, shouldn’t, can, can’t… PAUSE. Ask yourself: how am I not trusting myself in this moment? How can I practice trusting myself right now? Once you cultivate a mindful practice of going within you won’t need to go without. It’s time to reclaim your power and heal and mend from the inside out. Reclaim your power and start getting down to the roots.

 

Stop shoulding all over yourself (and others),

 

Melissa

www.melissaromano.com