What does your body have to do with leadership?? Guest Blogger and Life Coach Laurie Gerber chimes in. She life coaches clients to help them design all areas of life and one of the most popular is BODY! Why is this so important to success and leadership? For a few reasons:
1. When you take care of and love your body, you feel great. More energy equals more results. Plain and simple.
2. Taking care of yourself means self-respect and people can sense that. If you take great care of yourself, people will notice and admire you for it. Though we are not impressed with vanity, we are impressed with people who take care of themselves, honor themselves, and have self-discipline.
3. The body is a great place to encounter and deal with your relationship to yourself. We project a lot of issues onto our bodies and how we deal with food and exercise. Often our struggles in this area are related to our self-confidence, our past or current relationship with our parents or other family members, our upbringing, past disappointments or traumas, how we handle emotions and feelings like loneliness, fear, boredom and more. Dealing with this area to make it beautiful opens up lots of other insights that will improve your life.
4. Dealing with making your body beautiful (and remember this is about your standard, not anyone else’s) is about your integrity. Your degree of integrity is how much you can count on yourself to DO what you SAY you are going to do – like cut carbs, drink 8 glasses of water, say no to cake, etc. Body is an area which is direct cause and effect and the choice of what you put in your mouth and whether or not you exercise, is always yours. The opportunity to build the power of keeping a promise and thus your self confidence, is staggering! We recommend everyone work on this area even if they are moderately satisfied, because so much powerful ENERGY comes from being able to design and dream and then see it to fulfillment. This is the true key to happiness, satisfaction, and ultimately leadership.
So, what’s the process?
1. Integrity 101: Keep your promises– Going for your dream body means fighting the war against your mind, thoughts, feelings and excuses. To fight this war you need to make your promises more important than any feeling or thought you have. Keep your promises no matter what and then, no matter what, you will have the results you want. It is simple, but it is not easy. You will need support!
2. Remember: it’s not about the food– Food is just food. You do not have to make it something else besides nourishment. That’s a choice. Having your dream body is about your choices and your integrity. The fight to rule your mind and control your hand has shockingly positive benefits for the rest of your life!
3. Keep logs– You will find it incredibly helpful to log both what you eat and what you think about eating and exercise for a period of at least two weeks to start. Catch what your mind is actually saying to you all day. You will be surprised about what you are really up against with your thoughts and with the fact that you can shift it!
4. Confessions– Eventually you will need to write your entire story on food and eating. The true story of your history with your food and body will reveal the so-called causes of your current experience of yourself. The process of “unraveling” this story helps you see your history in a new light, giving you the freedom to write fresh, new chapters.
5. Keep dreaming– Write down exactly what you want to look like and feel like in the present tense, as if you already have it. Be specific and descriptive. Find a picture in a magazine that is a realistic representation of what you could look like. Paste your face on it and post it up somewhere where you can see it every day. Take at least five minutes a day to read your dream and look at your picture and really feel what life would be like in your dream body.
6. Make a food and exercise plan– Write a list of foods you’d be proud to eat; this varies from person to person, but you probably know enough to know what it is for you. This list and this schedule is your promise, your integrity. Do not stray from it!
7. Go public! Get a buddy, someone you know will NOT let you off the hook– This is someone who will rip the donut out of your hand if they catch you, someone who knows you all too well, will tell you the truth and will call you out on your excuses. Email them your food and exercise plan and report in on your promises every day along with any confessions. If you don’t have anyone like this, email us at [email protected] and join a group or get a coach!
8. Resolve yourself to a way of life– Once you lose the weight and tone your body the way you have envisioned it, you can add more flexibility to your eating plan. BUT, here’s the deal, if you want to keep your dream body, you actually need to KEEP it. Resolve to yourself that it is a privilege to look and feel the way you do and you will happily do the work to stay there. Revise your promises and continue to keep them. Loving and thriving from your own integrity will always be the key to your happiness, your power and your ability to lead others.
Laurie Gerber is President of the Private Coaching Division of The Handel Group, an international coaching company which specializes in teaching corporations, educational institutions, and individuals to take focused and powerful action in every area. Passionate about personal development, Laurie has been coaching individuals and groups for the last 10 years. Laurie holds a degree in Education and Political Science from Swarthmore College, along with teaching certification. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two daughters. You can contact her at [email protected].