The Right Time

In the areas of our health and happiness, who is in command? Is it us or the advertisements we see every day who tell us we have to use their products to be happy, or the ‘experts’ we see often who tell us we are deficient in some way, or relatives and friends who give us minor ‘correction’ comments and supportive help out of our imperfect situations, decisions or conditions.

Of course that is a long question that asks who is in command of us, of our lives?  We or they?

It is no wonder that a large percentage of our population is underconfident.  Advertisements show models with bodies we can never hope to achieve.  There are enough of them to make us think that is normal and we are less.  Some advertisements also show us that unless we use their product, the problem we have (did we know we even had it?) will never go away, and we will be less.

Weight loss of course is the biggest crisis there is.  Advertisements bombard us with testimonials on how much this model or famous person lost and they tell us they have never felt better.  Of course they achieved their perfect body through the use of a diet, food plan, gym workout or exercise product that promises to compress hours of exercise into a few minutes.  All make us desperate to get on that train and be like them, instead of being ’not as good’ or ‘not as fit’ as they are.  Many doctors are not much better, telling us our weight and cholesterol is far over what it is in a long-distance runner from Nairobi, and we must strive to attain that ideal health model.  Just another put-down.

How many of us open the refrigerator or snack cupboard when we get depressed?  I do.  But the perfect body doesn’t make us winners, and less than perfect doesn’t make us losers.

Teachers, relatives & friends all have a kind word for us that we must try harder, do better.  We could have scored higher, dressed better, said more appropriate things, all well-meaning, but adding to the layers of correction and loving criticism that push us emotionally down.

Scoring systems, whether sports or credit, tell us where we are in relation to the ‘best’ and it is normally not ‘up there.’  Are you a superstar in a sport, or the fastest runner you know, or have a perfect credit rating?  Probably not.  Remember this as a side note.  Star runners are normally only good at a specific distance and class.  Put them in another class or a different distance and they might not perform as well.

The entire philosophy in this society is that fear and pain motivate people more than pleasure and happiness, so beat with the stick and always keep the carrot just out of reach.

We know deep down we are winners all, each in our own way.  Each of us has our passions and our specialties.  They are the things that give us feelings of great pleasure when we are doing them.  The feelings we get are our gold medals.  Contrary to general thought, there can be more than one winner.  In an Olympic sport for example, there are those who stand on the center block and receive the gold medal.  Does that make everyone else who competed losers?  Absolutely not.

Perhaps the thing you are best at is not something publicly rewarded.  Perhaps you are great at making those around you feel good.  Perhaps you are great at showing love to people who need it most.  For fifteen years, I taught 13-year olds a difficult sociological subject.  There were times when they were making my life miserable.  I never counted my success or failure rates against anyone else, but years later, on more than several occasions, young parents with their own children would come up to me and ask if I remembered them.  Of course I did, because they were one of the worst behavior problems in my class.  But they went on to thank me for showing them the right path in life, and they considered they were where they were now because of me.  Wow!

Gold medal!

In this blog I will attempt to share some of my experiences and feelings on how to feel better about yourself, to realize that we are winners in the human race, where there is an endless variety of talents and abilities, and we all are good at different things.  The goal of the human race is to compete against ourselves, to do our personal best.  We will consider this a journey more than a race.  There will be some false starts and dead ends, but we will perservere together.

We will show ourselves who is in command and how we are living a vital life.

Hang in there, you can do it.
BobG