AKA Becoming the woman in a Tampax Ad
Table of Contents
- the power of tiny transformations 🔎
- But I can tell you what I wanted for myself, and what my transformation has been…
- So, my transformation looks like:
- Your brain doesn’t want to spend all that time and energy on minute decisions about if 2 tablespoons is enough of a condiment.
- How do you want to transform the tiny little moments that make up your whole life?
the power of tiny transformations 🔎
Can I be fully transparent with you?
In Business™, part of copywriting is “selling the transformation.”
I’m supposed to describe to you the life that you want, that you will get, after working with me.
I would love to do that. I really would.
But I don’t fucking know what you want with your life.
Any tableau I would paint of your future life would be a disservice to the full, rich, meaningful changes that will happen after working with me.
I don’t really want to tell you what I think you want. I want you to figure out what you want. And if you want to tell me, I want to help you get that.
I feel a little like George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life. “What is it you want, Mary? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.” #ThePerfectMan, btw
But I can tell you what I wanted for myself, and what my transformation has been…
- I wanted to go to restaurants and NOT try to guess which item that wasn’t a salad was “the most healthy.” I wanted my mom’s Eat This, Not That guide books to NOT be the images floating in my head anytime I ate a meal where I didn’t substitute ingredients for the skim/low fat/less sugar/reduced sodium alternatives. I wanted to eat a meal that tasted good, and not feel guilty about it.
- I wanted to leave work, go home, and decompress without feeling like I should actually be exercising. I wanted to know how exactly exercising “gives you MORE energy” when it only ever left me completely exhausted. I wanted to recover from a full day of work by NOT exercising, and not feel lazy.
- I wanted to wear the cute crop tops or swim top with short shorts in the 100° temps and 99% humidity and NOT be completely consumed with how my fat body looked squeezed into semi-fitting clothes (that’s really the best we can do with modern clothing, especially in larger sizes, isn’t it?), and how other people felt about how my body looked. I wanted to let my skin breathe as much as anybody else, and not be cripplingly self-conscious.
- I wanted to spend my weekends going on adventures and hanging out with my friends without feeling like I had a nagging to-do list ticker tape running through my head 24/7 about all the “adult things” I wasn’t getting around to do. I wanted to be present and enjoy the moment, and go to bed every night without feeling like a failure.
- I wanted to set a goal and eventually taste the sweet, hard-won victory of pushing myself and growing in order to achieve it, without feeling like it was already a futile effort, because I had literally NEVER achieved a goal I had set in my life. EVER. I wanted to know how some people knew how to work toward a goal, and why I felt like I could never follow through on things, especially on keeping promises to myself.
- I wanted to watch TV at night and NOT end up binge eating all the Little Debbie snack cakes & Oreos in the house. I wanted to be able to eat sweets without getting a stomach ache. I wanted to be able to eat some dessert and then easily be able to stop, and not feel completely addicted to sugar.
But even telling you all of that, it’s still not really what Business™ means when they tell me to “sell the transformation.” Because in storytelling, you’re supposed to “show, don’t tell.”
But my transformation? The immediate, most important outcomes weren’t what was added to my life. It was what was finally absent.
And the changes were almost imperceptible in the external world, completely unnoteworthy to an outside observer. The biggest changes were entirely internal, which allowed me to make choices in my life that looked like everyone else’s.
How do you show a transformation that’s mostly internal, about things being gone, and it looks like what you’d expect normalcy to be?
I guess the imagery of my transformation would look like a tampon commercial, but with a chubby woman?
(Except, ya know, nobody owns that many white clothes.)
So, my transformation looks like:
- A hot summer day, having lunch with a friend, and I ordered a chicken caesar salad, because it was what I genuinely wanted–and it was absolutely delicious. No time wasted on an internal debate. No patting myself on the back for making the “good” choice. And no binging later that night because it was both filling and satisfying.
- Or celebrating my husband’s birthday and getting the greasy, cheesy, pepperoni with ricotta cheese on top and drizzled in hot honey, then washing it down with some fruity cocktail, because it was what I genuinely wanted–and it was absolutely delicious. No time wasted on an internal debate. No name calling or figuring out how I was going to “make up for it” later. And no second thoughts, comparing it to what others ate, or worrying what they thought of me.
- I could also tell you about my tie-dye rainbow crop top & booty shorts, my exercise habits, my goals, how soundly I sleep at night knowing my to-do list is non-existent, or about how I threw out my last box of Little Debbie cakes because, as it turns out, not only do I no longer find them “bingeable,” I actually find them inedible. But this email is long enough already. (If you’re interested, or if any of those struggles hit close to home for you, I’d be more than happy to share and I’ll tell you the god’s honest truth about how I got from there to here.)
But here’s the crazy part: I have to really sit down and rack my brain to think of these examples of how different my life is NOW, because this just feels like normal. And quite frankly, I think it’s because it is.
Your brain doesn’t want to spend all that time and energy on minute decisions about if 2 tablespoons is enough of a condiment.
So when you finally convince your brain to STOP wasting its processing power on that, you sort of start to forget how much time, effort, and work it used to take you to move through the world. Not only does ease become your new normal, but I think it IS the normal.
It’s what you would naturally do if society didn’t teach you that there are a bunch of toxic rules about how you’re supposed to do every single thing in your life. (That’s why there’s a common saying that all babies are born Intuitive Eaters.)
When you boil it all down–for all of my clients, for everyone who has become an Intuitive Eater, for everyone who discovers Body Neutrality–the transformation is really that with your brain freed up, you’re able to be present and enjoy the moment. AKA, LIVE YOUR LIFE.
And life is nothing but a million tiny little moments.
So what are the little moments, the little things that you maybe don’t even realize you’re missing, because your brain is too busy running loud toxic programming for you to be present.
How do you want to transform the tiny little moments that make up your whole life?
Book a free 30 minute consultation call with me and we can discuss how you can transform all those tiny moments so you’re finally living your best life!
