If Jillian Michaels hates her *ass*, should you be listening to her???

Ok, I’ve never loved that word for a donkey & like it even less as a word for my tush. I’ve never particularly liked Jillian and now I know why.

Most people don’t love their derriere. That’s a pretty big part of the body not to love (especially in my case). Knowing that there is much self-loathing over this very big muscle and a very important part of our daily life, I vote we "GET OVER IT.”

I did.

It used to be my favorite thing to obsess over, to try to control. Bumps on your butt or the shape of it are not easy to control~even for Jillian Michaels! I like exercise but I don’t love it or use it as beat-up. I’m not one of those PUSH YOURSELF HARDER people. I do like my new Butt Bible routine. We’ll see how that goes. For now I’m just really really sore.

If you walked behind me, you might think, "Wow, that girl has a big butt."

But here’s the thing. I love me. I love my squooshy tushy. It’s soft. It’s womanly. I don’t look like a super model. I like diversity. Yeah, if it got smaller I wouldn’t be mad or anything. I don’t have it insured.

BUTT...If one of America’s top trainers hates hers, why in the world is anyone listening to her? Simply put, we want someone to tell us it’s ok to hate ourselves. It’s ok to be hyper-critical. To keep pounding away on the treadmill and keep working working at this area that we want to control and change because we don’t love it. What’s easier? What feels better?

JUST LOVE IT. (get it?? not JUST DO IT…)

That doesn’t mean (God forbid!! GASP!!) that you can’t work on your body, or do the Butt Bible...butt are you going to SUFFER until you get what you want? Maybe it’s just me, butt is that STUPID OR WHAT??!!

You wanna suffer, listen to self-haters. You wanna love, listen to me. That’s what I’m all about.

I love you AND your big, flat, bumpy, droopy, tight, bounce a quarter off of, working muscle that is your primary way to WALK & SIT.

LOVE THE DANG THING. IT’S THE ONLY ONE YOU’RE GONNA GIT!!

MUAH!! xoxo
Love, beauty and truth,
Auretha

See Yourself through the "Glory" Filter!

I recently saw Diane Sawyer on her show while I was at the gym, gloriously haloed by her filtered lens. Since all the TVs were side to side, her image was in stark contrast to the harshly realistic HD cameras used on the other news anchors. (I'm pretty sure Barbara Walters was the first to use the wrinkle-free filter.) I almost felt as if I was tuning into a more beautiful, heavenly world where angels sang as she spoke.


I didn't mind one bit. I didn't mind being spared a wrinkle or two. She looked gorgeous and god-like with perfect makeup, hair and clothing after years of experience figuring out what works best for her. She looked feminine and smart.  

Diane is the perfect icon of the mature woman. I was still able to see her essence through her "glory" filter. 


My point is: Why not see ourselves through a "Glory" filter? What would it be like to look through a lens that makes us look and feel good about ourselves rather than seeing ourselves through a harsh filter that magnifies our every "flaw"?


Would you be willing to see yourself in the best light?


Literally, would you be willing to have a mirror and lighting that makes you look and feel good rather than heavy, wrinkled, bumpy & bruised?


So what if your mirror makes you look 10% thinner & taller? I'd be curious to see if you lost weight after seeing yourself in this mirror for awhile. One of my perfect clients has a mirror like this and I think it's a good experiment. Try feeling better about you for a little while every day, using any tool in the book!  Use peach lighting that goes vertically down the wall, so you are not lit from above but evenly illuminated.


Stand up a little taller. Suck in your stomach. (You might find yourself wanting to do an extra plank or two!)  Feeling better creates being better. Being better creates doing better...it steers us into the current in the river where we are headed in the right direction.


Let's stop with the "Be Hard on Ourselves and Others" crap. It doesn't work. It doesn't change a thing except making it worse. Create what you want from a place of imagining yourself as you would love to be! Use your imagination as much as you can every single day. Try it out and report your results right here! 

Auretha gets real and wants to be the next Oprah

I've kept my personal life personal. Or tried to! I thought it would be more "professional". Now I see that it's crippling me from bringing all of who I am to the world.

Sorry. I'm including it all now. On this blog. I'll still be including style/essence/beauty/image/fashion tips and tools, but there will be much more of me. I realized I wasn't blogging because I couldn't bring all of me to the table and it just wasn't interesting to me! I realize that some people may perceive me as shallow (which is ridiculous to me because I am anything BUT shallow!) My exuberance for life may put people off. My drive for my business may be offensive to some. Maybe I am not personal enough. Here it all is, like it or leave it. Follow me or don't but I am bringing it straight up. And it's personal. I'm a personal person. I love Oprah. I'd love to do what she's doing. Pretending to not be personal would be ridiculous for me.

Today's revelation. Yes, I want to have my own cable and internet TV show. Yes, I want to bring SELF-CARE to the forefront of womens (and mens) minds. Self-LOVE, too. I want people to be seen in their essence, not just some idea of what someone thinks they should wear.

I need to trust my own "Intuition". Of course it's all about me needing to take care of me and teaching others how to do it, too.

What I remembered today when I was feeling sad (during a stint of helping a friend run her retail store while she was in Greece) is that my mother never stopped working. I love my mother. She was a warm, loving Martha Stewart before MS was cool. She did it all and apparently that trait has left a meaningful dent on my neuronet. I can't stop doing MORE. So I will inadvertently create a mess to have something to DO. If I'm not busy with clients I feel that there is something wrong in my world.

Sylvia Nibley, from ConsciousBusinessCircle.net reminded me last night that it's about BEING not doing and that doing-ness can get in our own way. Her gentle loving vibe confronted my weary sense of "what more do I need to do for my business?" It never ends...social networking run amuck. The fact is that I need to care for myself and when I live it, I will teach it and SHOW it and that is something worthy of bringing to the table, on TV or elsewhere.

My request is that if you are willing, send me your loving energy that I will create this value for myself and for other people. And hopefully I will become the next Oprah.