Some years ago, I was asked to host a lecture for the Foreign language department students, to tell them about the profession of a translator and an interpreter from the point of view of an insider, due to my working experience of 15 years. While I was preparing for the lecture and choosing the examples I would use, I thought of the following comparison: the language we use is similar to a train that goes down the railway tracks of our mind, and a person who only speaks one language has only one track and one train. The person who speaks at least two languages will have two railway tracks and so on. A person who speaks several languages will use one train or another depending on the situation, and a translator is a person who jumps from one train to another all the time. The faster he or she does this, the more professional they are. A translator (specifically a simultaneous translator) must think and speak fast - a skill that you can acquire if you train long enough. Some psychologists believe that bilingual people may develop different sub-personalities for different languages. I believe that anybody who is trying to learn a foreign language (or maybe even learnt it), has come across phrases that sound amazing in the native language, but lose their charm as soon as you translate them as they make no sense from the point of view of a different culture. I remember one verb in German from my student days, “leichtfallen”, which I translated for myself as “to fall into memory easily” or “easy to remember”, and sometimes this word describes my thoughts exactly.
A few months ago, I saw a movie completely by chance and I heard the prayer that Catholics pronounce before the meal: “Dear Lord, I am grateful for all I am about to receive”.
“Oh my God, this phrase is amazing!” – I shouted out aloud, as I loved the sentence straight away, – “It is probably one of the best things I have heard recently!”.
“It is just a prayer people say before meal, nothing special”. My English-speaking husband didn’t share my excitement. “I don’t think anybody even realizes what this sentence means, we just say it”.
I was pondering over this phrase for several days, finding more and more joy and sense in it. I consider this is the best thought to begin your day with, because it means that I am 100 % sure I will receive something truly amazing that my loving God has prepared for me. This may not necessarily be food, but will definitely be something that will make me happy. It gives me a very distinct feeling that I am loved and cared for, and this is the “base” that is used to build a healthy self-esteem and a positive perception of oneself.
When I worked as an English teacher, I often told students that the English language is tailored to politeness and friendliness and has much more supporting and encouraging phrases, even if the people pronouncing these phrases do not really mean them. The sentence I used as a heading for this article, “Continue being awesome”, I have heard in some movie as well, and I believe it is one of the best wishes one can bestow upon a woman.
Firstly, the person who pronounces such a phrase confirms (accepts, realizes, admits) that the woman is awesome and admirable right now. She does not need to prove it anyhow, she is awesome just because, and any achievements such as diplomas, work experience, cooking or cleaning skills are irrelevant.
Secondly, this person likes the woman the way she is, which is very important in a relationship. It happens sometimes that the woman is beautiful, and cooks and cleans well, but the man is not really interested in her and no good food can keep him in the relationships with her.
Thirdly, the only thing this person wishes for is for the woman to continue being herself. He does not demand any achievements or accomplishments from her, does not tell her anything like: “Is it the best you can do?” No depreciation, no passive aggression, he fells good when he is with her.
On further contemplation of the topic, I had the following thought: “Why, I wonder, do women (usual, average), most of them, not start their day with this phrase? Why don’t they look at themselves in the mirror early in the morning and wink at themselves: “Hi, gorgeous, you look stunning, keep it up, I love you!”? I am not saying that such women do not exist, they do and some of them I have known personally, but it is rather an exception than a rule. What prevents women from thinking about themselves in such a manner? What is even more important is what needs to be done for them to start thinking in this way?
Consider the following:
1) Accept yourself,
2) Refuse to fight,
3) See the beauty.
The order is up to you, as you would prefer.
Accept yourself .
Esoteric theories often talk about “self-understanding”; “approaching yourself”; “self-perception”, and in general it boils down to the idea that we as human beings need to realize our divinity and cultivate the level of understanding ourselves as a spark of the Divine mind, not to consider ourselves biological robots and start doing the things that we were given divinity for, and not to follow the direction shown to us by government and society. Actually, there is nothing more valuable in a human being than divinity, as all the rest is so called “family programs”, given to us by our ancestors and mostly based on fears and disbeliefs (there are exceptions, but they are rare). Society only cares about you when you fulfill your duties which are imposed on a child the moment he is born. Duties may include to go to school; to study well; to go to university; to choose a profession, to work hard, to reproduce and to be useful for the society. It is ironic that even sex between marriage partners is called “matrimonial duty”.
I consider that “self-understanding” is a second step, a more advanced one. The initial step will be “self-acceptance”, the permission you grant yourself to exist in general and to be the way you personally want to be. This takes into consideration several levels, both physical and emotional, as we have all the possible physical bodies, someone may be skinny whilst someone may consider them fat, but not everybody is accepting of himself the way he is. Maybe the “body positive” trend is exactly about that, the way you are is the way you should be. If you think that only fat people can be discriminated against and mocked (in modern society this tendency seems to be decreasing) I can tell you, that since I was young I was asked: “Why are you so skinny, don’t you eat at all (doesn’t your mother feed you)?” million times, and I don’t even consider myself skinny. I don’t know why this question was not perceived as a rude one, unlike the question: “Why are you so fat?”. It’s funny that now, when I am a bit older, this question is asked with a different understatement, “How come you don’t gain weight in your age?”, which gave me an idea to conduct a group training for women. We found out, that the vast majority of women are convinced that gaining weight after thirty, or after giving birth is absolutely unavoidable, which proves one more fundamental esoteric statement: “You are what you believe in”. If you subconsciously “vibrate” on the idea that you will gain weight after you turn thirty or after you give birth, no special diet or exercise will prevent you from doing it, your mind is stronger than your body.
If gaining weight by women after thirty were to be socially accepted or even praised, there will be no problem whatsoever, but it is not. Moreover, any real or imaginary deviation from a standard or norm (which is quite vague as well) is rather frowned upon by society and as a result, by the woman herself.
“I am fat, and it means I am not good enough”.
“I am skinny, and it means I am not good enough”.
“I am tall, and it means I am not good enough”.
“I am short, and it means I am not good enough”.
You can add to the list yourself: somebody has a big nose, or big ears, or big feet, but in the end, it comes down to the same statement: “I am not good enough”. Who will love such a person? Nobody. This may form the basis for parental manipulation, as the child will try to do his best to prove otherwise, until he is fed up with it, of course. When he is fed up with it, he will shrug his shoulders and say: “Yes, I am not good enough, what’s next?”
Accept yourself in the body you have now, as your body was given to you for a specific reason. Maybe precisely for loving yourself the way you are. The next step is for you to except your emotions. There is a technique in coaching (in case you are stuck in some heavy emotion, like guilt or shame) when you need to put your palm over your chest (preferably over the heart) and say: “I accept the emotion I am feeling at the moment and I give it the proper place in my inner world”. Acceptance of emotions is the only way to deal with them. You cannot “fight” them, or run away, or ignore, or destroy, because they come to you for a specific reason, and will keep on coming, until you face them or go to jail for the crime of passion!
I further theorize that actors and actresses (whom we admire) are not even that beautiful or ideal, but their acceptance of themselves is so strong and profound that makes us admire them. So, what if we try to look at ourselves with the same level of admiration? Or as soon as we think about it, we feel afraid of being narcissistic which straight away means: “I am not good enough”? The ideal version is the absence of any evaluation. Not “I am fat, therefore I am good”, but “I am the way I am”. There is just acceptance, nothing else. We can’t say that the Alsatian is better than Bolognese, but we can say that an Alsatian is an Alsatian and the Bolognese is a Bolognese, or we can say that “I like Alsatians and I don’t like Bologneses”, but it doesn’t’ take away their right to exist independently of each other.
Important phycological moment, such as separation from parents will also be built on acceptance of yourself. Your mother wanted a son, but gave birth to a daughter? Your father wanted his daughter to become a basketball player, but she became a seamstress? Your grandmother wanted something, grandfather wanted something and maybe even the dog did, but it has nothing to do with a real person. We cannot be tied to the hopes of our parents. Or we can, but in this case, we stand no chance of being ourselves. The Dear Lord gave us a part of himself, not for the purpose of fulfilling our relatives’ broken dreams - even if they do their best to persuade us otherwise.
Refuse to fight.
I often hear statements similar to: “You need to fight your fears”, “You need to fight your weight”, “You need to fight your bad habits”, and this is Fight with Yourself.
“You need to fight for your love”, “You need to fight to find (or to receive) a good man”. “You need to fight for family happiness”, “You need to fight for success in your career”, “You need to fight to receive good marks, appraisal or a place under the Sun” – all this is about fighting the world around you.
“Life is hard”. “You need to pay for everything you have in life”, “Nothing is for free”, “Life is a fight” – this is about fight with life, God, love, freedom and joy.
It is easy to spot a woman, who is constantly fighting. She is rigid, tense and cold. She doesn’t have time for fooling around, for herself, for doing nothing or for laugh. She fights with her own drawbacks, and with drawbacks of her children, her husband and the entire world. She criticizes, disapproves, finds faults and always knows better. She plays angry and bitter dialogues in her head non-stop and she believes that the world around her is hostile, and that everybody around her wants to offend her, hurt her, insult her and put her down. She fights with smoking neighbors, with spelling errors, with the government, with aliens, with neighbors’ dogs and roosters. She writes complains, reports wrong doing and applies to the Committee for the Consumers Protection Rights. If we apply the esoteric principle: “The word is a mirror” in case of this woman, she will have an eternal internal fight, because to reach the exact target called “I must fight” the Universe will have to find and provide this woman with people and circumstances with whom and with which she will have to continue fighting. I remember an example from one of the coaching clients of mine, a woman who kept marrying alcoholics, and when I asked why, I found out that this woman’s internal belief was “I must fight alcoholism”. How do you fight it? You marry an alcoholic and keep trying to rehabilitate him! I can’t prove it with scientific data, but I might theorize, that mothers of drug addicts have an internal statement “I must fight drug addiction”, as mothers of untidy teenagers may have one about “I must fight dirt and mess”.
So, I will surprise you – or maybe I won’t – a woman mustn’t fight anything or anybody, because it contradicts with her nature. As it is said in the Veda, even a strict fast is prohibited for woman as it deprives her of their tenderness and goodness. Moreover, she shouldn’t have to leave her comfort zone, due to the same reason. A woman must live in safety, calmness, joy and comfort, and only in this condition she will be able to “supply” her home and her family with the beneficial and good energy. Would this be possible if a woman constantly has to fight and be negative inside? Of course not.
Avoid inner dialogues with imaginary “enemies” that force you to show aggression, even in your thoughts. Avoid situations where you have to shout, argue and defend anything. Avoid angry crowds, scandals, quarrels and attempts to prove anything to anybody. Keep your energy to yourself and remember: a man needs to fight, he grows with the help of it, but a woman only loses herself.
Let me make remark. There is a popular phrase or a cliché, that a woman must inspire a man in order for him to achieve heroic acts. The achievements are usually “Earn as much money as possible and give it all to your woman”, nothing like “fly to space”, “receive a patent for your invention” or “make your dream come true”. In other words, the idea of inspiration for the majority of women is mostly “nag, make, demand, pester, make a scene and manipulate a man” to get what she wants. Here we can find numerous inner statements, each better than the last. Firstly: a man is a creature so lazy, stubborn and worthless, that only by kicking him all the time can a woman make him do something. Secondly: a man by himself wants nothing and strives for nothing, he can only sit on his bum and wait, until somebody starts motivating him and leads him in the right direction. Thirdly: a woman always knows better what a man needs (don’t mix it up with “what he wants” as this is irrelevant), and a man always needs exactly what his woman needs, with no other options. There is only one comparison here: a woman can (or maybe even shall) motivate and lead a man if she is his coach and he is her trainee. But, to me, it has nothing to do with family or family relationships. “To get married” doesn’t mean: “To find a log and to carve Pinocchio out of it”. If a woman treats a man as a tool for the fulfilling of her material desires from the very beginning, she will receive a disappointment, both in the man and in the marriage itself, but if you have examples of the opposite, I will be happy to listen.
See the beauty.
I grew up in the Far North of Russia, where summer lasts a few weeks and the majority of vegetation consists of shrubs, pine trees and dandelions. What is the biggest dream of such a person? To live in a warm climate, where you can go outside in shorts and flip flops avoiding the stage of getting ready for visiting outer space, when you must put on your thermal underwear, skiing pants, jacket, hat, scarf and gloves. After many years of living under the conditions of an almost eternal winter, the word “snow” rather tenses me, than brings me joy, because it means frost, slippery roads, perhaps a flat battery in the car, difficulties with driving, and in general “winter” means discomfort and depression. But there is one “but”. The cold northern nature is more beautiful than the hot tropical nature, and this is not only my personal opinion. The tropical variety of colors are amazing, but at some point, it becomes too much. Too bright, too flashy, too vulgar - as a girl who has much make up, too low a neckline and too short a skirt. As one of the Russian stand-up comedians once said, “A girl’s Instagram picture manages to fit her lips, boobs and bum in the same frame”, so you can see everything at one time, there is no space for guessing or fantasy. Pictures of tropical beaches are more or less the same: turquoise waters, golden sand, palm trees, hammocks, an illusion of calmness and tranquility. We have all been there and we know the reality of those beaches. But did you have a chance to see the Norwegian fjords, the huge rocks on Cape Town beaches or a sunrise over the Sea of Okhotsk? If you did, on which picture will your eyes linger, which beauty will impress you deeper? I bet you, not the tropical one.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Make an effort to see it where it is not obvious. If you take make up, artificial nails and eyelashes, botox, silicone, push-up bras, tight jeans and straightened hair away from women, what will be left? Just a person, and will this person be beautiful? Yes, if you make an effort to see it, but it won’t hurt a woman to see this beauty in herself. I really like European women who dress to live, to walk, to go to work or to go to cafes and not to “catch a man”. They have non-ideal bodies, natural eye brows, wrinkles and some grey hair, but they are cool in their easiness, they are like the rocks of northern seas: free, independent and self-confident.
Try to see the beauty in the everyday, in fallen leaves, in a broken fence, in a gloomy sky, in a cold sea, and most important – in yourself. The statement: “Woman was created for love” can be understood as somebody must love that woman, or as woman loves and this is her intended purpose, and it does not mean that she must iron shirs for her husband or make porridge for her children, it means that she must love herself, the world around her and life as it is, even if at first glance it seems that life is just a sequence of obstacles and failures.
Take a scared and nervous dog from the shelter and surround it with love and care, and you will see how it changes in a matter of months. Take an abandoned piece of land and care for it and you will see how flowers start to blossom. Take your life and fill it with love and you will see what life gives back to you.
Value yourself,
Yours,
#anyafincham