Brave, Strong & Smart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Promise me you'll always remember:  You're braver than you believe,  and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - Christopher Robin
 

 

I have always loved Winnie The Pooh.  It amazes me that such a profound statement comes from a children's book.  I think that this is something that should be taught to children at an early age to instill confidence in them.  As adults, many of us struggle to believe in ourselves, and so, it is time for us to remember the quote, and apply it to ourselves, and our lives.

 

We look at ourselves in the mirror, and something clicks.  We decide that it is time for change.   Change takes both courage and strength.  You have to be smart  to come up with the plan to make this change happen.  Each of us possess all of these qualities, even though we sometimes forget that we have them,.  Maybe we have never known that we do.  All of  us are brave, strong and smart.   We just have to believe that about ourselves.  Why is it easy to point those characteristics out to someone else, but to never see them in ourselves? Either we have lost sight of who we really are, or we have never believed these things about ourselves in the first place.

 

Although this is a concept that applies to every changes we try to make in our lives, I am going to specifically apply this concept to our Weight Watchers journey.

 

The moment we first decide that it is time for change, we are deciding this by ourselves.  We decide to join Weight Watchers.  It takes courage to walk into that meeting for the first time, not knowing what to expect, and possibly not knowing anyone there.  Will this really be a support system, or am I doing this on my own?  If this was not the first time starting the program, I would assume that it would take even more courage, because someone has been down that road before, but never gotten to the finish line.  To sign up online takes courage, because we are definitely doing this alone, until we find your support system.  Think about how brave we all were, to have taken these first steps.

 

The next step on this journey is to be strong.  To succeed, we have to make better choices.  We have to not give into our old ways of thinking.  We will stumble.  We will have to get back up and try again.  We will have to stand up to people that say things along the lines of "you can eat this, just once."  "You deserve to treat yourself."  The great thing about our program is that we have strength in numbers.  We have our friends and family that we can ask to help hold us accountable.  We have the support of the people in our meetings.  Now, we have the support of the Connect community.  Keep in mind, it still takes strength and courage to walk into every meeting, especially if we think your numbers may have gone up, or we may have had a few bad days. It takes courage to step on that scale, knowing that we may not like the number we will see.  It takes courage and strength to not give up and move forward.  It takes courage and strength to post on Connect, to show a before picture, to say we are struggling, or just to say that we are on the journey.

 

We are smart, because we start to make smarter choices to obtain our goal.  We made the decision to go on this journey.  We are smart because we use the tools we have; our meetings, our friends and family, Connect, podcasts and blogs, and many other tools that I have failed to mention.  We are smart because we have made the decision to change our lives.

 

Now, I want everyone, including myself, to remember this, and repeat it to ourselves when necessary.  You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think!