Episode 28: How to Train Your Brain to Think About Your Body

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 28 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I'm so happy to be here with you sharing this little space in the podcast universe.

[00:49]
What an amazing world we live in! This week I coach someone who lives in Italy and she found me through the podcast that I make in Arizona! And she signed up for a free coaching session and I got off that call. and I just thought, "What an amazing world we live in! Someone halfway across the world is listening to this podcast and finding value in it and applying this work in her life. And I get to be a part of that!" And I am just like so humbled and awed by the amazing miracle of it all and especially by each of you who are listening and downloading and sharing the podcast. It means so much to me and I just feel like like, how could life be more awesome than it is?

So last week on the podcast we talked about approving of ourselves exactly as we are, despite the feelings of inadequacy and lack that comes with being human.

So just like any other characteristic we have, our brain has an opinion about our bodies. And because it's programmed to look for problems, it's opinion about our body is always focused on what's wrong or undesirable about our body, right?

So just like in any other area of our life, our brains job is to notice the dangers and to be alert to all the things that may get us kicked out of the tribe—in this case things that maybe make us unlikable or different or unsuitable in some way. So, when it comes to our thoughts about body image of course this is about our physical appearance.

[02:48]
Now because of what you already know about the brain you shouldn't be surprised that your brain find your body lacking in some way. This is standard operating procedure for your brain. And this programming is at work in this area as well.

So, we think that if we just fix certain things about our body then we're going to feel better about it and we'll have a better body image. But no matter how many things we change or fix or remodel, our brain never stops working and it's never going to stop pointing out the problems. And I just want to emphasize that all this work by your brain is finding problems that aren't actually problems.

And so, feeling better about our body is not about changing our body, it's about changing our brain. Our bodies make our human experience possible, but how we feel about our bodies is entirely created by our brains and by the thoughts we think. Our thoughts, our perceptions, and our feelings about our body then are all optional. They are just a creation of our own brains.

And I just want to point out here that the brain is part of that body. It's crazy, right? So, it's almost like as if there was a painting that came with its own art critic, right? The painting is a physical creation. And then, what if each painting came with its own personal art critic that would tell you all the things that's wrong with itself, the way it looks, and all the flaws it had?

[04:13]
In a way, this is how our own brains are operating. Our brain is housed in a body, but instead of being in awe of the creation that is a part of, it instead offers critical thoughts and notices all the things that are wrong with the body that it's in. And it does this just because it thinks it's necessary for our survival. It wants to prevent expulsion from the tribe which of course is unnecessary in today's world. But when we know this, we can recognize that there actually isn't anything we need to fix except our thinking.

Okay, so how do we feel better about our body, regardless of what our primitive brain is telling us. First of all, you need to recognize that how you feel about your body is just a collection of thoughts. It isn't the truth and it isn't reality. These thoughts, this collection of thoughts are based on current cultural ideals, media influence, and then our own individual ideas of what is beautiful and what is not.

For example, right now there's a cultural ideal that says flat abs are beautiful. So somewhere along the line there was a thought that flat abs were attractive and that kind of caught on and that thought got adopted on a more universal widespread level. But it wasn't always this way, right? If you look at renaissance art, for example, the ideal body image was a very round stomach. The thought back then was that beauty was found in a large round belly.

And it wasn't that they were misinformed about what is beautiful and it's not that we're misinformed about what it's beautiful. It's just that it's always just a thought. Beauty is a thought. It's not a constant, immutable truth.

[05:55]
So, another silly example is eyebrows. So, some of you will find it hard to believe that there was a time when people did not tweeze or shape their eyebrows, right? I remember watching an awards ceremony one time and Julia Roberts (they were doing like kind of a montage of her films) and I remember her getting up and commenting, "Like why didn't somebody hand me some tweezers in the 80s?" Right? And it's because in the 80s, eyebrows really had nothing to do with our thoughts about beauty. It was like a non-issue. And then like this started to change and then we went like completely to the other side. Twenty years ago, we used to tweeze our eyebrows to this really super thin, tiny line. And now today bigger thicker eyebrows are considered more beautiful.

And maybe you've seen the new trend toward eyelash extensions, right? It's kind of hard to miss. Everybody's walking around with these super long eyelashes and I don't say that to judge anyone, but just to show you that this is a thought that we're starting to believe— that longer eyelashes are beautiful, but it's all just thoughts. They're all just optional thoughts about what you think is beautiful and you get to decide whatever you want about your body and about what you think is beautiful. It's completely up to you.

So, when my daughter was little, I had to take her one time to the ear, nose, and throat doctor to get her ears checked. And we're at the ear, nose, and throat doctor. And they, of course, look at a lot of ears and noses and throats, and as we were checking out and making our appointment for the next time, the nurse hands me the appointment card and she said, "You know, honey, I've seen a lot of noses. But I've never seen a nose as small as yours." And she wasn't saying it like that was a really good thing, right?

And so, my daughter was standing next to me right. And she was just little like four or five. She's standing right next to me when this nurse told me that I had the smallest nose you've ever seen. And when she said that my daughter reached up and touched her own nose. And then she just like looked at me with these really wide eyes. Right? Because we have—my daughter and I—we have the exact same nose. And until that moment my daughter had never had the thought cross her mind that her nose was small or that her nose was unacceptable in some way. Right? That never occurred to her. She had never had that thought. And suddenly now this thought was in her mind. Right? Noses are different sizes and mine might not be the right size.

[08:36]
So do you see? The problem she suddenly found was not in her body. It was not her nose. It was in her thought about her body. So that's just so good to know because if you have a thought that you wish something was different about your body, or if you have a thought that something isn't right, it's important understand that it's just a thought and seeing your body differently starts by really understanding this—by really understanding that whatever you believe about your body is a completely optional thought.

So I like asking myself what if I didn't believe this at all? What if I didn't believe that tall was preferable or that stretch marks are undesirable? What if I thought a flat chest that came from creating and feeding four babies and then gaining and losing a whole bunch of weight was just completely awesome? Like what if I just believe that? Did you know that's completely available to you? You actually get to believe whatever you want. Right?

So I was thinking about this the other day because there's this guy in my neighborhood that I see sometimes when I go to the post office who believes the earth is flat. And he has his truck wrapped in a vinyl wrap that is like all about his flat earth theory and where you can go to get more information on how the earth is flat. Right? He gets to believe whatever he wants. There are no thought police coming by and saying, "Sir that's really unreasonable. You can no longer believe that." He just gets to believe the earth is flat. I just want to offer like, so do you—not that you're gonna want to believe that, right, but you get to believe whatever you want about your body and about what is beautiful.

So, when my daughter was in China, she said that people would come up to her and take her picture all the time and tell her, "Oh you're so beautiful." And she said all the time people were telling her how beautiful she was, how pretty she was, and she said when she got home, she kept thinking like, "What's wrong with everyone? No one is telling me how pretty I am or wanting to take my picture." And she said like, "I went to the store and not one person stopped me to tell me that I was beautiful."

[10:54]
That's going to be an adjustment, right? But here's the thing. The exact same feelings that she had in China are still available to her here at home. When the people in China told her she's pretty she believed them. She believed that thought. She thought she was beautiful, and she gave herself permission to believe that she was beautiful. And she can give herself permission to believe that now. You can give yourself permission to believe that any time you want. It's always just our thoughts. Ask yourself, "What do I want to believe about my body? What do I want to believe about the way I look?" Because you totally get to believe whatever you want.

Okay, the second thing to know to feel better about our bodies is to understand that body image is just a really easy thing to use as a tool of comparison. So our human brains, as you know, are naturally inclined to judge and rank and assess how we compare to others. And this is especially true when it comes to body image because it's right in front of us. Right? It's visual. And we can make comparisons really, really quickly.

So I recently heard Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife talking about this very thing on a podcast and she said this: "The body is a kind of quick measure of one's value. It's an easy way to kind of size ourselves up because as human beings we're often looking for the most superficial assessments of ourselves and others. What kind of grades do we get? How much money do we have? How do we appear? Body image is just one of those false but easy measures of self. And so, I think our natural instinct is to prioritize it and focus on it in a way that is distorting of our actual value but very easy to make our focus."

Did you hear what she said? "Body image is just one of those false but easy measures of self and focusing on it distorts our actual value." And I think as soon as we start to compare ourselves, as our brains are naturally inclined to do, we do distort our actual value and we distort what it is we really want in our lives.

[13:08]
So I remember an experience that I had when I was first losing weight. I was working really hard to lose weight and build muscle and it took so much longer than I ever thought it would, or than I ever thought it should. And I would see these people on Instagram, and they would show these like amazing 12-week transformations—three months and presto new bodies, right? And I would think like what am I doing wrong? I must be doing this wrong. I must be on the wrong food protocol. Or I'm doing the wrong exercise, or something because I don't look like them. I look nothing like them.

So the problem was that when I looked at others and compared myself that I had all of these thoughts that said there's something wrong with me or the way I was doing it or the way my body was responding or even just like the way my body was built. And when I compared myself to others then I naturally started despairing about my body.

Anyway, so one day I was at the gym and I saw a girl and she had only one leg and she was using a metal prosthetic leg and working out and my brain saw her, and I had this thought. (Now, okay, I'm going to tell you this but please don't judge me because remember I have a human brain that makes comparisons, right, and I'm not proud of it.) Okay, and so I saw her, and I had the thought: "I would weigh so much less if I only had one leg. Think how much lower the scale must be for her than for me because she only has one leg."

Okay, now this is what I mean by the distortion that we can experience when we allow our brains to compare. My brain did this comparison so fast it was almost instantaneous. I saw this girl and I made an instantaneous comparison and we all do this to some degree. We compare without thinking. We compare without questioning it. And we don't really notice how distorting and how destructive it can be and how it really does distort our feelings about ourselves and others.

[15:11]
So for me, in this case, like I was so shocked by the thought I had, I was so shocked that my brain could even create that kind of comparison, that it kind of recalibrated my thinking about comparison in all the areas of my life. And I made a conscious effort to avoid comparison. I stopped letting my brain rank my progress against other people on Instagram and whenever it offered comparisons I just offered back: "I'm right on track. I'm right on track."

You have to keep your eyes on your lane. Your brain won't want to, I'm telling you. But you have to take charge of your brain and redirect it when it starts comparing. You have to be the boss and talk to your brain more than you listen to your brain. So Byron Katie said this: "Everyone has the perfect body. If you weren't able to compare your body to any other what could possibly be lacking."

Right? Like she's saying the only reason we see a lack is because we compare. If we stopped doing that, we would never lack anything. And she goes on to say, "Without the mind's comparison, no one can be too fat or too thin. It's not possible. It's a myth." In other words, the comparison of our mind is the only thing that makes us "too anything" or "not enough anything" and without ranking and comparison there would just be no judgment of ourselves or our bodies.

[16:39]
Okay, the last thing I want to offer you in regards to feeling better about your body is exactly what Byron Katie said. It is to remember your body is perfect.

Now stay with me. if you remember in the last podcast, I talked about how your brain is always going to point out the things that are wrong with you. And you could just stop arguing with your brain about it and recognize that of course there's something wrong with you, but that's 100% okay. And I think you need to adopt a similar idea in regards to your body.

So we spend so much time wishing things were different about our body. We waste so much time comparing ourselves, or belittling ourselves, or bullying ourselves for the way that we look. Think about what you don't do in your life because your brain is telling you that you aren't thin enough or you aren't beautiful enough. What if you just stopped having the argument with your brain altogether? What if the truth is that of course there are things wrong with your body but what if it's still 100 % perfect?

What I want you to see is that the idea that there is an ideal body image, or a perfect body image is completely arbitrary, meaning it's not fixed. It's simply a collection of thoughts that can change or vary depending on when you lived in history, where you lived, what culture you came from. It changes depending on all of those things. And so if that's true then that means there's not one perfect version of the human form. Perfect is as individual as the person.

[18:16]
And here's what I mean by this. So I used to give presentations on body image with my sister, Rachel, and at the end of the presentation I would tell the audience that they could just give themselves permission to see themselves and their bodies as perfect, right? And I would tell them the truth was that their body is perfect exactly as it is. And I would say like, "Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: 'Well that's easy for you to say— your body is perfect." and everyone would laugh, right? I don't know why that was so funny.

But truly I believe my body is perfect. And here is why.

The body that I got when I came to earth was designed for me. The body that I got had cancer and the body that I got has had lots of side effects from radiation and chemotherapy and all the treatments that I had to go through. And it's given me, because of all that, a certain life experience. And I believe it was the experience I was supposed to get. There are things that I have learned from my body that I could learn in no other way. I needed this body to learn them. It was all on purpose.

And this same body with its cancer and its difficult pregnancies and its allergies to Palo Verde trees also has short legs and a flat chest and a tiny nose—and it's all perfect.

[19:42]
And I actually believe that my daughter who has the same nose was supposed to be my daughter and that she lives in my house, not by accident, but actually by divine design. She was supposed to come to me. I was supposed to be her mom. And that means that if God wanted her to be my daughter, he also wanted her to have that nose and that means that she's in the body she's supposed to be in. Her body is perfect too. It's not by accident that she's my daughter, which means it's not by accident that she has the body that she does.

You are in the body you were supposed to have. It is perfect for you—for your mission, for your work, for your purpose, for your learning, for your growth and development and evolvement. Your body is perfect.

So a few months ago we were in church and during our Sacrament meeting there was a woman who got up to speak. And she has a daughter named Kristie who has Down Syndrome and who's amazing and funny and sweet and compassionate. But most people might think that her body doesn't fit the ideal body image, right? She has Down Syndrome. Anyway, her mom was speaking and sharing your feelings and she said that she knew that someday Kristie would be in a body like ours. And I remember thinking, "Maybe. Or maybe in that day of perfection, we will all look like Kristie." Right?

Like here on earth with our human brains and we don't even know what perfect bodies are. We think we do, right? We have a collection of thoughts that we all collectively kind of believe is the standard beauty ideal, but we don't really even know that that's true. We think we know what's desirable, but these are just human thoughts that we've thought as a group, with support from the media, and reinforced by images that we see every day. But really truly, we might be wrong about all of it.

[21:41]
The truth is that what we believe about beauty and perfect bodies are just imperfect human thoughts and perceptions. And the more willing you are to question them and give up your assumptions about body image and what is really beautiful, the more freedom and joy are available to you. I often tell my clients "You are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings." It's no different when it comes to your body: You are not your body. The authentic you is separate from all of those physical things and it's whole and separate and perfect, all by itself.

Your body is simply a vehicle so that you can have a human experience. Appreciate that it makes all of this possible and choose to believe it's perfect for that job. Ask yourself, "What would be different if I knew my body was perfect?"

I just want to offer you one more thought. Too many of us believe that hating ourselves is the way to change or be different. We think that if we know we're a mess or we know we're unacceptable in some way, then at least we're the first ones to know and we never let ourselves forget it, right? Ironically our brain always thinks the biggest danger is getting kicked out of the tribe, but in reality, the biggest danger is the abuse that we allow our own brains to heap upon ourselves. And in many ways beating ourselves up can just become a really bad habit.

Stop letting your brain bully your body. You are in charge of how you think. Your primitive brain will offer you thoughts, but you don't have to attach to them. You don't have to believe them. You don't even have to acknowledge them, but certainly don't invite them in and pay attention to them.

[23:31]
Some of you think that you're obligated to think terrible things about yourself, right? Your brain offered it so it must be true. No. Your brain offered it to you because it's worried about your survival. But you know better. We have to stop thinking that our brain knows something we don't.

This summer I read a book called The Little Book of Big Change and the author, Amy Johnson, wrote about this very idea. She said: "When we don't realize how simple and often meaningless the lower brain's messages are, we innocently and understandably hear those messages as truth." Let me read that one more time: "When we don't realize how simple and often meaningless the lower brain's messages are, we innocently and understandably hear those messages as truth."

In other words, we put so much meaning on the things our lower brain is telling us, as if like we need to know it in order to survive. This is just simply not true. Stop making your brain's messages about the way you're lacking mean anything. They aren't true and they don't mean anything about you or your value or your identity. Those negative thoughts that feel so automatic are never required.

Brooke Castillo always talks about the day that she decided "enough was enough." She just decided she wasn't going to think negative things about her body anymore. It was just no longer allowed. And I want you to know that that is available to you. Enough is enough. If you wouldn't say it to them, if you wouldn't say it to the people in your life, don't let your brain say it to you.

[25:12]
One helpful question you can ask is: "What is the upside to thinking this?" We often think that if we know we're unacceptable then we'll beat the tribe to the punch, right? But we only end up hurting ourselves. What's the upside to thinking this thought? There's no upside to thinking negative thoughts about yourself.

I want you to know that the things you think about yourself and believe about yourself matter. I was talking to a client who is telling me about her house, right? And she was saying like, "What a dump!" And telling me all the things that were wrong with it. She was telling me like it was just the truth. It was just the news, and she was just relaying it: "I live in a dump." Right?

And I told her that when she thinks her house is a dump that's all she's going to see. She can only see the things that she hates or the things that she wishes were different. I asked her what if she thought her house was a palace? What if she appreciated everything about it, right? The windows and the wood floors and the room that she brought her babies home to? What if she noticed the way the light came in in the morning or how the roof kept her family warm and protected? The way she thinks about her house matters because she sees what she thinks.

And it's no different for you and your body. When you think your body is a dump that's all you can see. You just notice all the problems. What if your body is amazing? What if you appreciated everything about it and noticed all the tiny things you never see? The way your heart beats, and the way your nails grow, and the way you can create whole human beings with your body? What if you loved the way it could carry you anywhere you wanted it to go and the way that it sees and hears and tastes and smells? The way you think about your body and all that it can do matters because you will see what you think about.

[27:03]
I told you that I had to have surgery a few weeks ago and how it affected my exercise at the gym. And it just made me so aware of the gift I have been given—the power and the privilege it is to be in a body that can do what it can do and then heal itself, right? It can pump oxygen wherever and whenever I need it. It's like magic! Really!

So what if you just let yourself marvel in your human body and be a little bit awed by it, instead of thinking that it's not right in some way? I invite you to be a little bit amazed by your awesome body and see what that thought creates in your life.

Okay, that's what I have for you today. I want you to remember that your feelings about your body are just a collection of thoughts that you've chosen to believe but you get to believe whatever you want. Comparison is the natural response of the brain, but it distorts your perception of yourself and it's a false measure of yourself and your worth. Don't let your lower brain run away in comparison. Remember that your body is 100% perfect exactly as it is, and there is no upside to entertaining negative thoughts about yourself. You can simply draw a line in the sand and no longer choose to think that.

You get to choose how you think about you—about all the parts of you—including your human body that is making your human experience possible. The primitive lower part of your brain only wants to point out your flaws, but you are not your brain and you are not your body. You are so much more than that!

[28:43]
And it turns out that you, the authentic spiritual you, gets to be the boss of all of it. How you think about you and your body is entirely up to you...and that my friends is 100% awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!