**this is an excerpt from my book Fit 2 Love: How to Get Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit to Attract the Love of Your Life**
“Your relationship with yourself is the central template from which all others are formed. Loving yourself is a prerequisite to creating a successful and authentic union with another.” Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott
One of the tools that was pivotal in helping me manifest and manage all my relationships since 1998 was Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott’s book, If Love is a Game, These are the Rules. It was the first time I really understood the concept that how others treated me was a direct result of how I treated myself. When I could stand back and be objective about my behavior toward myself and what messages that sent out to others, I realized that the relationship I had to focus on most to get what I wanted was with myself. If I was not willing to treat myself like a queen, then how could I expect someone else to?
Your turn.
How do you treat yourself? When you wake up in the morning, what do you say to yourself? Do you compliment or criticize your body? Do you try on clothes, pinpointing all of the negative things you can, secretly wishing you could have someone else’s body?
If you do, you are not alone. This common practice of most women is the exact behavior that drives the fitness and weight loss industry—and I hate it. We focus on perfect bodies and how can I spot reduce this area so I will like myself, or so someone else will find me attractive and valuable? The underlying emotion here is fear. Many spiritual teachers of mine over the years have all agreed that our actions are motivated consciously or subconsciously by either love or fear.
Fear is defined as a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by present or imminent danger and a feeling of disquiet or apprehension. Fear can be a good tool when you think your life is in danger, but most people live in this emotion all day long with no such threat. Fear is uncomfortable to be in and around. Fear can also be defined as lack of trust.
Love is defined as a deep, tender feeling of affection and care toward a person, such as that arising from kinship or a sense of oneness, and a person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction. Love feels good, and we seek it all the time. We hold others as objects of our attention to give love to, and we want to receive love from others.
Which of these is activated more in your life when you deal with your body? Is it mostly love or fear?
How many times in your relationship life do you attract people who do the same thing or change the way they treat you as the relationship progresses? They start off complimentary and wonderful in the first two or three months, then the compliments stop coming because you either did not receive them or you argued about them.
You trained them how to treat you.
How often do you deflect a compliment? Someone tells you that you look pretty, and you say, “Oh no, I just rolled out of bed, and I am having a bad hair day.” This blocks a compliment.
Many women do it because they have a hard time receiving. You are not allowing yourself to receive the gift because your inner critic does not believe what the other person says. You want to feel attractive, then someone gives you a compliment, and you reject it. Can you see what message you are sending to that person? Why would anyone compliment you again?
Take out a sheet of paper and answer these questions to see what your body blueprint says about you based on every area of fitness and self-care, including exercise, diet, rest, play, and self-talk. We will then work on creating a new body blueprint that can yield more desirable responses.
- List all the thoughts you can remember you had today, from the time you woke up to now, about how you look or any judgments on your character. For example, if you made a mistake, did you quickly internalize with a thought like “I am so stupid,” or did you think “Oh well, glad I learned that now?” List all of your thoughts in a single column.
- Underneath the last thought, write a list all the actions you did today, from taking a shower to eating breakfast. Also include things you would have like to have done or should have done and didn’t. For example, you did not take your supplements today.
You should have one long vertical row that contains all the thoughts you were aware of today and all the actions you have accomplished so far. Now make another column to the right of the first one and answer these questions.
- Next to the thoughts you had, write down if they were positive comments or negative. If you criticized yourself, that is negative. If you brushed your teeth, that is positive.
- Next to the actions, write down a brief reason for doing that action and whether it came from love or fear. For example, if you wrote down ‘had a cup of coffee, went to work and skipped breakfast,’ do you think skipping breakfast was an act of love or disregard? You know the body needs fuel, so if the reason you skipped breakfast was because you were too busy, you put work before yourself, which sends the message that you are not as important as your work. Keep going through your list and be honest with yourself about the messages you are sending.
What Does Your Body Blueprint Say?
Answer the questions below and identify the message you are sending with each of your answers.
- Exercise: How do you take care of your body? Do you exercise regularly? What kind of exercises do you do and why?
- Diet: What foods do you consume on a regular basis? Are they high energy, clean foods that provide vitamins and nutrients for your body? Are they processed, chemically created foods that contain large amounts of fat and sugar with no nutritional value? Do you consume the amount of water your body needs to function optimally every day? Do you ingest toxins and drugs?
- Rest: Do you sleep at least seven to eight hours a day? Do you unwind before going to bed? Do you take breaks during the day to relax and recharge your mind and body?
- Play: Do you have fun on a weekly basis? Do you laugh often? Do you feel joy and do things you love every week?
- Self-talk: How do you treat yourself with the words you use in your mind? If you talked to someone else the way you talk to yourself, how would they respond?
The thoughts you are aware of and your actions are part of your consciousness. You can change those behaviors starting now. But before we start to focus on the steps of changing your body blueprint to build the kind of relationships you want in your life, let’s acknowledge how some of these habits got there in the first place. Why is it this way? Where did these patterns of thought come from?
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To order the book or get your free copy of the 4 Week Fit 2 Love Plan, please visit www.fit2love.info
If you ‘d like to listen to a 60 minute call about Your Body Blueprint, you can download the MP3 for free by clicking here.
