Sports teaches us about ourselves. Who we are, who we want to become. They also teach us about drive, the inner fire that tell you to keep going when it hurts or not to quit when you want to.
The above video is a true story, an inspirational story if you will. A story, on some level, we all can relate too; the fight to not quit when things get tough and the inner fire to keep going when you don’t want to. Derek Redmond was an Olympian, a world class athlete who was competing for his country. There could be no bigger honor than that, to be on the largest stage in sport.
The unfortunate part is the way the story seems to end. Derek, in a position to take home an Olympic medal, pulls his hamstring in the semi-finals of the 400 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympiad.
To work your entire life to get one opportunity and your body just says “No.” What happens from there is the definition of courage and a “never give up” attitude. Derek knew in his heart and mind he had lost but he would not quit, he would finish. He picks his broken body up and carries it, with the help of his father, to the finish line. Take a second and reflect, have you ever quit something? Have you given up on your fitness goals and past achievements because you don’t believe you can do it anymore?
Use this as an example that life will always build walls you must break down and obstacles that you must climb. It are these missions that truly define us as human beings and we must remember that nothing and I mean nothing is impossible.
Just never quit. Never quit on yourself and never quit on your dream. The time is now.
“I’m not eating this weekend because the girls at school want to be skinny.” Emily, 9.
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In 2004, after years of processing my own body image issues, and with a determination to have things be different for my daughters, I didn’t expect my own child to begin that steep slide into dieting misery so soon, if at all.
I took a few hours to recover from my little girl’s statement of deprivation, and then I came to the conclusion that if I really wanted things to be different, I would need to take action myself, and fast.
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The conversation and research that followed opened my eyes to several truths:
Kids talk. And they are all affected by media messages (billboards, commercials, print ads, Hollywood glamour) about protruding stomachs, fat thighs, and jiggly arms.
Women talk. We do, and it’s a lot of self-criticism about protruding stomachs, fat thighs, and jiggly arms. And, we talk about other women in relationship to all those things, and about how she looked in that outfit. Constantly, constantly, constantly.
Conversations overheard about appearance become messages about what is acceptable, desirable, worthy of love, and they are more potent than any billboard costing 1,000’s of dollars to print, because they are personal—about real people we know—about ourselves. And, our girls are listening closely, all the time.
The seeds of self-esteem and self-image are planted long before girls approach puberty. Though criticism may be directed at others, and even if we only ever complement our little girls, they grow on the reality that criticism is just around corner if they grow into women of stomachs, thighs, and arms, of any type.
So what’s a mother to do? I wasn’t certain, but I was sure that I wouldn’t allow one more generation of women in my family to struggle with the self-hatred that comes from a legacy of criticism, peer pressure, never ending dieting, and debilitating low self-esteem.
I did have a hunch that in order to help make changes for my daughter and her friends, I needed to help make cognitive and emotional changes for moms, too. Because after all, we were all once girls who grew on those very messages. No one ever told us to stop listening.
And so, with mother-bear determination, I called health and wellness professionals in my Lexington community who seemed to carry some authority: pediatrician; nutritionist; psychotherapist; police-officer. And I asked them to become a part of the community that would influence and help raise healthy girls.
With professionals on board, Girls Rock!: Workshops for Girls and Moms, was born. We would all come together, pre-teen girls, mothers, and professionals, for a big empowering day of programming that would make all of us responsible for healthier language, relationship to self and friends, and habits at home.
But still, the kids in attendance would need real, up-close and personal role models to emulate—people they could think of as big sisters—the ultimate role models of omniscient authority to a girl.
So I recruited a diverse team of teenagers with leadership potential who seemed to defy what Mary Pipher identifies as one of our culture’s greatest tragedies, “Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.”
Something profound happened in our very first workshops when the Girls Rock! Teen Mentors spoke. They stood with confidence in front of girls, mothers, and professionals and said, “We are all different sizes, shapes, and ethnicities—this is what normal looks like—this is what pretty looks like”.
The young audience of girls listened closely, but the mothers and professionals were moved to tears.
And then it was clear. Hearing for the first time from people who represented our own youth, that beauty was never meant to be one-size-fits-all, opened the blinds and let the sun shine on the truth that we always were, and are right now, pretty enough and good enough, and that we are so much more.
Isn’t that what we really want for ourselves?
It is exactly what we want for our daughters.
One workshop led to another, and another, and we became a non-profit and published a book (Click here to order), and I can report that my daughters now teens themselves, are Girls Rock! Mentors, today. Hallelujah.
Looking back now, it’s amazing to me that I could have pulled this off—recruiting and training teen leaders, finding passionate professionals and generous keynote speakers, and reaching out to other mothers and girls who would attend.
Technically, I didn’t know anything about running this kind of thing—I was driven intuitively, and I found that women both young and old could relate, so I kept going. I prayed that my daughters and their friends would benefit, and that I could send my girls to sleepovers knowing they would be influenced in positive ways.
Year after year, Girls Rock! continues to be one big community of volunteers and families showing up just because we have all been affected, are still affected by a ridiculously unfair standard. But most of all, we gather because we care about the development of self-esteem in girls.
Though there is undeniable power in pervasive cultural messages especially saturated by media today, there is something more powerful about women coming together to educate, heal, and find inspiration together. As girls and women we are a part of something that is much bigger—it’s called Sisterhood, The Women’s Lodge, the Feminine Divine.
This is a place anywhere and everywhere on this planet where females of every age, status, and background can gather to nurture one another with acceptance. It’s simple and it’s a magical thing to be a part of. It makes us grateful to have been born as girls.
So, it turns out that my years of healing before motherhood were just the very beginning for me. My young daughter’s fateful entry into self-doubt felt like familiar territory—I couldn’t have imagined it would provide me the drive to heal more deeply, nor to help find a solution for my community.
While the distance travelled to arrive to a place of peace is never easy with these issues, I’m feeling it’s been worth the journey so far.
Most of all, as my daughters grow into adulthood with perspective, confidence, self-esteem, I will say that I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Prayer has helped a lot too.
To invite Lisa to speak at your gathering, contact her directly:
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Mar 12, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
With last week’s Dow Jones record high, most pundits tell us that the recession is over. Various economists might debate the specifics, whether the deficit is still a problem, why unemployment numbers still matter, but no matter whether you follow Fox, MSNBC, or Uncle Sol, things are definitely looking better. Which is great news – but a little sad for me.
My husband and I are both musicians, which means we clearly married each other for our money. (Cue rimshot) (What’s the difference between a T-bill and a musician? Eventually the T-bill matures and makes money . . . . ) Our income has always lagged behind our neighbors, we rent instead of owning a home, and when people start to complain about the hassles of remodeling their kitchen or how hard it is to decide where to go on vacation, we just smile weakly and hope someone changes the subject.
But during the height of the recession, everyone we knew was in the same boat – my designer-savvy friends were shopping at TJMaxx, families couldn’t plan vacations around their next stock windfall, and high-earning high-tech dads were getting laid off. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t happy for anyone else’s misfortune, but it was really nice to have company. Now when friends would ask us where we should meet for dinner, we didn’t feel like the poor relations when we suggested the cheap cool Burmese restaurant instead of the casual-but-pricy bistro.
Now that the stock market seems to have rebounded and things are coming back to normal, at first I was afraid we’d be alone again in our financial struggles. But it turns out not everyone is feeling the joy – in fact, many middle-class families are still having a hard time – and I’ve heard that from Fox, MSNBC and Uncle Sol.
Many terrific blues songs came out of The Great Depression, so here’s a modern-day blues for those of us who feel a bit left out of the latest economic good news . . .
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Mar 11, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Are we going to see a bunch of sand? Do we have enough water? Why are we visiting the desert anyways? These are the questions I asked myself as the alarm sounded at an alarmingly early 7AM. The desert doesn’t have much to offer us humans, in fact, the word “inhospitable” comes to mind, inhospitable as in “stay out!” By the end of the day though I was glad we did some desert exploring in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
Follow this guy into the desert? Seemed like the start of an Indian Jones movie…
Visiting the desert was high on our list of things to do in Jordan, but then we got there. It cost roughly 20 times more than we were prepared to pay, offered less than half of the things we’d want to see, and, to top it all off, seemed like it was going to be way more work than I was willing to expend to be dry roasted. When I saw inexpensive tours from Dahab in the Sinai I thought, “why not?” and signed up for the Colored Canyon and White Desert Safari.
A lot of what I hear from new clients is a desire for what I call “Next Level Style”. Next Level Style is the development of a look that is uniquely one’s own, one that will make others sit up and take notice (but only to the degree wanted, of course!). One of my favorite things to do as a stylist is to seek out clothing and accessory items that will create that affect. No more walking into your office and seeing another guy in the same exact Brooks Brothers shirt and Ferragamo tie. With that goal in mind, today I’m shining the spotlight on stingray, a material you’ve possibly never heard of in relation to style.
Stingray leather (also known as “shagreen”) is extremely durable and has been used throughout history for everything from swanky armored clothing to sword handle wraps. Today in the fashion world, stingray is used on items ranging from wallets to shoes. One of the nice things about this skin is that stingrays aren’t threatened by extinction, so its leather can be sourced easily, which also contributes to its relatively low pricing. In fact, stingrays are found in abundance in the shallow, warm waters of the Pacific Rim and are fished commercially as a primary food source.
Here are my 6 favorite stingray items currently available that I hope will inspire you to get some new hides into your rotation.
Read the rest of… Julie Rath: Try a New Hide — Stingray
First things first, I am not an endocrinologist (only play one on TV J) and I am not a registered dietician. I like to think of myself as a problem solver, a MacGyver of sorts. Because in all reality that’s what we do as trainers, we solve problems with the knowledge base that we have, no matter how unconventional it is. With that said, there are a lot of theories out about people lose and gain weight. With the rise of obesity at an unparalleled high, people are trying to get healthy and lose body fat in record droves. From Atkins diets to the Zone diet, to the weird tropical fruit diet and my favorite the carrot stick and apple diet (holy cow!), people are trying to find the quickest way to lose weight. The fact is there is no easy way, if it were easy the obesity rates would not be where they are now. We would not be spending billions of dollars on medications that control weight related diseases. This is not an easy process by any stretch of the imagination. However when I look at weight loss books and these fad diets, I rarely see anything about a person’s hormones. When in fact it is your hormones that decide where and how much fat you store. That’s a fact. Throw the calories in vs calories out out the window, your hormones are in the driver’s seat. Lets take a look at them:
Fat Burning Hormones- hormones that when present in your body, will help you burn body fat
It’s so easy to forget that we are so powerful, but it is the truth and it is an inherent quality of the human spirit. I was a walking, breathing example of a girl, who out of trauma and struggle dreamed a different life for herself, and made it happen. Today I understand the grace and the quantum mechanics behind this, but living it came first—it always does.
A funny thing happened yesterday. Funny interesting, and strange, that is. And, kind of awesome (an experience leading to awe).
After planning for months that several days at the end of February would be dedicated to the specific and serious de-cluttering of my home space, and after very painful procrastination during designated well-planned days, I unexpectedly ran into a colleague who offered up an identical story, strangely.
While waiting in line for our lattes, he recounted his story of scheduled organizing, in the final week of February, and a lack of giddy-up in the GO.
My antennae picked up the signal with maximum alarm.
Inside my head it sounded like this: What?! Beeeeeep! Beeeeeep! Beeeeep! What?!
I knew immediately that this encounter wasn’t just about the random coincidence of a mirrored situation from someone I rarely see and who never discloses information about his personal life. Nor was it about the unbelievable story of what was happening in the latte line.
Nope, much bigger, much, much bigger, and I became consciously, thrillingly aware of it in its unfolding this time. Right there, in that informal setting surrounded by average people and beverages, I recognized the inter-relativity of everything, and, that I create my own reality whether I realize it or NOT.
And this is what it look like:
Read the rest of… Lisa Miller: Synchronicity & Intention
In this incredibly polarized political climate, it’s always refreshing to find areas of bipartisan agreement. And a recent poll about congressional favorability ratings showed that liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, men, women, older & younger voters are all unified in their disapproval of Congress. Nobody, apparently, thinks Congress is doing its job, and this sure seems like a great place to start working together to find solutions, since we’re all agreed about the problem. Maybe this will help us dig our way out of the sequester mess, before Congress loses any more favorability (by some polls they’re already down to single digits).
I will leave the specifics of those solutions to trained political scientists and commentators, but meanwhile I was struck by one aspect of the poll. This time, instead of just tracking percentage approval rates, some brilliant pollster decided to put things in context by asking respondents to compare Congress with a fairly wide, weird assortment of things, so people were asked whether they viewed Congress or traffic jams more favorably, that type of thing. And as many articles have referenced, Congress is less popular than a ton of fairly awful things, ranging from colonoscopies to Donald Trump – a list which was just begging to be turned into a song!
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Tue Mar 5, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
“The Republican Party has just about written off those women who work for wages in the marketplace. We are losing them in droves. You can’t write them off and the blacks off and the Hispanics off and the Jews off and assume that you’re going to build a party on white Anglo-Saxon males over forty. There aren’t enough of those left.”
Ripped from the headlines? Hardly. That quote is from Bob Packwood on 1 March 1982, quoted in Laurence Barrett, Gambling with History: Reagan in the White House (New York: Penguin, 1984).Four observations, and some tentative conclusion:
1. Plus ça change…
2. Those comments came during a recession, leading up to mid-term elections in which Reagan and the GOP took a shellacking of their own.
3. That shellacking, of course, was followed two years later by Reagan’s re-election in one of the biggest landslides in US electoral history.
4. Bob Packwood was so concerned about losing contact with women who worked for wages that he sought such contact aggressively throughout his Senate career.[Washington Post]
Tentative Conclusion: The GOP’s demographic problems have much deeper roots than 2012, though they have been obscured by the occasional electoral success. That can’t go on forever.
Oh, and it is possible to be on the progressive side in social issues and still be a creep.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Mar 5, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
Today I ordered my new drink at my new favorite coffee bar- Irving Farm. I keep wanting to call it Irving Farms, but that’s not the name. I discovered a few weeks ago that my drink is called a cortado. Thank G-d. I could never decide if I should order a wet macchiato or a dry cappuccino and I felt really stupid either way. Remember the old comic strip Family Circus? (I am dating myself now, and not in a good way.) There was one where the family was at a restaurant and the little girl asked her parents: “I want to get a burger and fries, but do I have to order the Little Miss Muffet?” That’s how I feel about contrived names.
Now when I order my coffee, I sound like a coffee snob. But that is appropriate, since I used to own a coffee bar. I usually get a wink from the barista and some beautiful latte art on my drink, as a nod to the coffee culture that we share. Or I just get a blank stare and an improvised macchiato (when I go to Indie in Lincoln Center.) Either way, there’s some comfort in finally discovering what I have been seeking.
On the opening day of my coffee bar, (that incidentally had a dating service for our customers,) May 29, 1996, it got a mention in Florence Fabricant’s column in the New York Times. She said that it takes a gutsy person to name a place Drip. That gutsy person was me!
The other day when I showed my business plan to a potential investor, who is also a creative type, he said: “The name is not very original, but I like the concept.” Actually, he wrote that in an email that was meant for his business partner and not for me to see. But in the flurry of the magic of Forwarding email trails, I got to find out what he really thinks. And I was totally proud. One of the problems with the name Drip was that people couldn’t figure out what the hell it was or what it meant. Doctors thought it was some twisted intravenous reference. It didn’t meet the Katie Couric 30-second test, but we were on the Today Show multiple times nonetheless.
So this time around I am trying to give my brand a name that explains what it is. There is so much marketing hype in today’s media world and so many ridiculously huge brands to compete with, that I try to keep it simple.
There’s just one thing. Matchmaker Café is an online dating site that sets up real dates in the real world through a real human. But we don’t have our own real café. Call me Miss Nomer. At least for now. But I have come to realize that the “Café” part of “Matchmaker Café” is actually my value added. In ’96 there was no online dating. There was no social media. There was just old-fashioned Café. And that worked.
So I am taking my show on the road. Looking for whatever homes will have my little café kiosk of love. Cafés, bars, retail stores, wineries, public plazas, Whole Foods? Just like Lucy from the Peanuts, I will be setting up shop to give out advice and to foster human connection in a new world where technology can be isolating.
I’m putting the Café back in Matchmaker Café. What’s the main reason? I’m lonely! I have a wonderful husband and son, and I spread love one client at a time right now. But I miss the serendipity of being “out there” where anything can happen. And I want to spread that magic to you.
So watch for me. Follow @MatchmakerCafe on Twitter and Like me on Facebook, and you will find out where I will be next. I could be coming to a neighborhood near you. If I do it right then a Café by any other name will smell as sweet. I hope as sweet as the Rice Krispy treats that we used to sell at Drip!
