Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle

A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and Increase of Energy

Chapter 2: Exercise to Live

III. Exercise CHILD Work
Our predecessor cavemen and cavewomen needed to nurture themselves to sustain their motivation and drive to keep up their level of physical activity and exercise when they were feeling bad about their ability to be successful in spearing and capturing their necessary food targets. They needed to have self-forgiveness for their mistakes and failures in their hunts. They needed to be open to accept themselves as not being perfect in their pursuit of their food prey. They needed to extinguish their discouragement at not being the "fastest", "most efficient," "most skillful," or "most coordinated, " hunters that they would like to have been. They needed to self-nurture and self-love themselves in order to sustain their desire and motivation to keep on with their life sustaining activity of food gathering. Cavemen and cavewomen naturally practiced a form of CHILD work which let them sustain their needed live serving activity.

You need to practice CHILD work efforts to sustain your efforts at implementing and maintaining an exercise program for your balanced lifestyle to address issues of self-hatred, self-loathing and self-deprecation you might be experiencing as you address exercise in your life. You may be angry at yourself for not sustaining a sufficient level of exercise and activity you once did earlier in your life. You might be ashamed of your body and are unwilling to exercise in public lest you let others see your body in sweat inducing activity. You may be down on yourself for no longer having the physical ability or agility to engage in physical activities you once engaged in when you were younger and in better physical shape. You might have been a compulsive exerciser in the past and are now down on yourself for getting so heavy and so out of shape. You may be filled with guilt and shame for what your body has become and find it difficult to initiate an exercise program for fear that you are so out of shape that you will not be able to handle any of it. You may not be able to forgive yourself for becoming the coach potato that you have become and yet you do not have any internal motivation to change or get off your potato. You might be able to say, "I need to exercise," but you lack the self-worth and self-deservedness needed to self-motivate you to pursue it seriously at this time. You might hate yourself so much that you recognize that to exercise is to live and the alternative of not exercising means slow self-destruction which you believe you really deserve for what you have done to yourself and your body. You feel so alone, abandoned and isolated in your life that you cannot picture yourself doing any physical activity with anybody because of your body size and weight. You feel so down on yourself that you find it hard to say anything nice or healing to yourself as you address this exercise component in the Balanced Lifestyle Program. Although you have done your anger workouts on exercise you still find yourself holding back from involving yourself in exercise and increased physical activity because you can't get up the internal motivation to "just do it." What you need to do is the following CHILD mirror work exercise daily to help motivate you to get up and do your exercise so that you will be able to live a happier, healthier, more vital, robust and vibrant life.

CHILD Exercise Mirror Work Exercise

First, you need to Calm yourself down. Read the story of The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson. When you finish the story about this duckling who is born different from others picture yourself as this duckling. Others saw the duckling as ugly and unacceptable. Due to the duckling's differences, it suffered ridicule, teasing and cruelty. Just like you have endured from others and most importantly from yourself when it comes to your body being out of shape, over weight and under exercised. But the ugly duckling survived and was rewarded for endurance, patience and a will to live. You, like the ugly duckling, are a beautiful swan waiting to come into your own. You need to grow in self-acceptance and self-love. You need to get more in touch with your inner beauty and stop "judging your book by its cover." You need to begin to look within for the inner beauty and strength in you so that you can become successful in your exercise efforts.

Now place yourself standing in front of a full length mirror and begin to look at yourself in the mirror. The person you are looking at is you. It is your inner child whom you do not often attend to. The person in the mirror is the inner spirit in you who needs to have you spend more time with. The person in the mirror needs to be re-parented and given guidance on how to address your concerns about exercise in a healthy self-loving way. The person in the mirror needs your forgiveness for being a human being subject to making mistakes and experiencing failures. The person in the mirror is a person in need of your love, concern, tenderness, warmth and compassion. The person in the mirror needs to know that there is love in your heart no matter what that person has done, how that person looks or how much that person weighs. That person in the mirror needs your unconditional love. That person in the mirror and you have a relationship and are part of a team with a power greater than you who is your Higher Power. As you look at the mirror imagine the strength, warmth, compassion and love of your Higher Power as you begin the next step.

Once you have calmed yourself down by looking in the mirror, begin to feel the Healing presence of your inner child and Higher Power. Begin to feel the strength that comes from teaming up with your person in the mirror and your Higher Power. This is a team that can tackle any problem. This is a team that will be on your side as you begin to implement your exercise program. Once you feel that healing presence you are ready to move on to the next step.

You are now ready to both Inform and Love yourself through the following script. You can use this script as it stands or write out your own. Tailor this script to fit your circumstances. Be sure that you put in your script self-forgiveness and letting go of shame and guilt themes if they are needed. Put in more affirmations about doing exercise to encourage you that it is good and healthy for you and that it can be fun and relaxing for your. It is important that you use the same script daily so that it eventually becomes a habitual way of thinking and feeling for you in regards to you and exercising.

• You are a beautiful person and I love you very much.
• You deserve to live a full, healthy and balanced life.
• You are no ugly duckling you are a beautiful person deserving of my acceptance and love.
• You are a swan waiting for me to give you a new lease on life.
• You deserve to exercise to live.
• You are worth the time, effort and resources I am spending on exercising to live.
• You are a wonderful gift to me and I will take care of you by exercising.
• I forgive you for your mistakes and failures in the past when it came to exercising.
• I forgive you for your compulsive approach to exercise in the past.
• I promise you that your exercise efforts will be kept in balance now and in the future.
• I forgive you for what has happened to your body and weight.
• I promise you that because you are loved and desired that I will take better care of you.
• I forgive you for the times you made a fool of yourself avoiding doing exercise.
• I promise that I will try to protect you from being pushed, prodded, threatened or coerced into exercising.
• I promise that when you exercise that I will make every effort to make it fun and relaxing for you so that you do not suffer from anxiety or panic as you engage in it.
• If others make fun of you as you exercise, don't let them bother you, since I am very proud of the effort you are making to increase the level of physical activity in your life and my approval is all that you need.
• I forgive you for not wanting to exercise in the past.
• I forgive you for hating to exercise.
• I forgive you for never wanting to exercise.
• I promise you that I will make every effort to motivate you in a loving way to exercise.
• I want to have long life with you and I know that through exercise our chances are better for an extended time on earth together.
• My Higher Power, I know you are with me.
• I feel your presence here in front of this mirror.
• I see in me Your power and majesty.
• You gave me the intellect, wisdom and common sense to make a decision to bring my life into balance.
• You have given me the tools to make my life healthier and stronger. I only need now to cooperate with Your generosity and use these tools to the fullest.
• I promise to be good to You my friend in the mirror.
• I promise to love you and be kind and gentle to you.
• I promise to be gentle with criticism and judgment concerning your exercise.
• I promise to give you the exercise you need to live.
• I promise to believe that you deserve the exercise.
• I promise that you deserve to succeed and become a winner in life by exercising.
• You are my special friend, I love you and I will work hard to make you all that you are capable of becoming.

Once you have completed the mirror work script on exercise, you then are ready to Direct yourself, the person in the mirror and your Higher Power to go out and exercise as often as you need to sustain your life.

I will exercise as often as I need to sustain my life.

I want you my person in the mirror to call me on it if I fall back on my exercise program.

I want you my Higher Power to be there with me so I can hand over my shame, guilt and lack of self-forgiveness which hold me back from pursuing a healthy life for myself.

I am going on from this day with a new spirit of hope and commitment to exercise to become a healthy, vibrant, robust human being because you and I deserve it.

Do this CHILD mirror work daily as you begin to implement your exercise program. It would be best to do this mirror work immediately after you do your daily exercise ANGER workout This will fill you with a new conviction and motivation to exercise and to feel the sense of self-love, self-worth and self-deservedness needed to sustain your exercise program.

To facilitate your doing of this mirror work, put the script on a card and put it on a mirror conveniently located near your anger venting place so you can go from one activity to another with little or no break. Rewrite the script as time progresses. Add new concepts or ideas as things change in your exercise life. At this point you are now ready to deal with control issues you experience in your exercise life

With kind Permision
James J. Messina, Ph.D., & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.Copin www.coping.org