In the beginning her coaching practice attracted women who were living small lives, preoccupied by things that didn’t matter. Brown now attracts women who want to move into a state of joy and who have a substantial effect in the world with their presence, their words, their work.

“There’s a whole secret dialog that goes with that,” Brown says, speaking from her own personal experience. It’s often the seemingly small unimportant things that are having a large cumulative effect. In her shower stall, for example there is room on the shelf for three items across. Four of those were hers, two were her husband’s. She put hers in the back so he could access his more easily.

One day she thought, “Forget that. I’ve got more stuff I need more room.” So she moved her stuff to the front. Result? He didn’t even notice. “That`s when I realized there were so many little things I was deferring. Things that had bothered me for a long time. I was doing all this so it would be more convenient for my spouse, dismissing what was best for me.”

This may seem insignificant but these subtleties accumulate and suddenly women find themselves at a place where they’ve lost themselves in the process. “Smart women think this doesn’t happen to them,” says Brown, “And yet it does. I speak about this in terms of integrity, keeping a wholeness about yourself and your needs, keeping promises to yourself. You don’t gain or lose integrity in one choice but in the many choices over time.”

Another way that women give away their power is in how they make requests of others. For example, when a woman wants to go to the movies she may ask her spouse, “Do you still want to go to a movie today?” Asking in this way defers her own needs. Instead Brown recommends saying, “I’m going to go to a movie do you still want to join me?” This puts the power back in your hands as no matter what he says you’re still going and don’t have to explain it. Contrarily, if you say you’re going to go that could be construed as a subtle diss to him. Asking in this way you’re neither deferring your power nor being over-controlling. “True power doesn’t need to control or accommodate,” Brown notes.

In her practice Brown teaches non-judgement. That means not judging your body, what you eat, how you react at work or at home. “Judgement and learning can’t co-exist. If you choose to go down the path of judgement you set yourself up to go to this moment again and again and get stuck. Once you choose learning everything opens up and becomes curiosity-driven. It’s a compassionate lens and everything is new. This works even if you feel you need to go to store and indulge.” Brown recommends looking at that experience and recognizing that you may need to do it to learn from it as an experience of contrast to behaviour you actually want in your life.

“Notice “what is” and that truth is neutral. If you’re fighting reality you’re spending a lot of energy fighting “what is” and that energy isn’t available for other parts of your life.

Brown considers herself fortunate to have had coaches who were excited with whatever she brought to them no matter how “negative” or extreme. “They thought everything was ‘awesome’. They were my compassionate witness and my unconditional champion.” We need constants like this in our lives, whether it be a coach, parent, or friend who teach us, believe in us and see every act we do as revolutionary and necessary for our progress so we can internalize these qualities for ourselves.

Kathrine Brown, North America’s most innovative weight loss coach, is the developer of the process Conscious Weight Loss: weight loss while life happens and the publisher of the ezine Wisdom Connoisseur: your voice of clarity on weight loss, which has subscribers in 10 countries.

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The Tyra Show

Do you have a body part that you absolutely hate and sometimes feel ashamed of? Are you constantly finding ways to cover it up or hide it? Do you always feel anxious whenever out in public, perhaps fearing that others are staring at you because of a self-perceived body flaw? If you have serious issues with one of your body parts, and wish you could change it, contact us.

How many of us fit the bill? Probably 99% of all American women. Are you one of them?

One of my clients is a body image expert and in one of our media coaching sessions  she said that she practices mirror gazing — naked. Every night before bed she stands in front of a full length mirror and looks at her body and loves each part, loves the whole of her.

Impossible? I thought so when I first started. At first I saw only the ill-effects of gravity, fat where there should be muscle and cellulite in all the worst places.

But after a few months things began to shift. I could see that I had great collarbones. Then I moved on down… It took a while, but now I can look at the whole kit and kaboodle and say, “Not bad.” I can’t say I love it all, but that I have a few good features that time has not yet taken full toll.

When I go deeper than that I can appreciate that I’m strong, healthy, athletic, and have a sense of grace and joy. When I spoke to Diana Marie Estey, Yoga Instructor for Yoga Works in Larkspur CA, at a Yoga Retreat, about body beauty through yoga she said, “I’m more interested in helping people connect to their sense of aliveness.”

Rather than worrying about what we hate about ourselves she advised that we see how we can create connection to our environment, the beauty of nature, each other, ourselves. I was thinking about connecting to this sense of aliveness today when I was out walking on my usual route, sniffing flowers, picking blackberries, and fuzzling dogs and cats I’ve come to know. On this hot night I passed a neighbor’s kids running through their sprinkler on the lawn, naked, laughing, wet and cool, screaming in delight.

“They are so lucky!” I yelled to their dad. “Don’t we all wish we could do the same?” What if we remembered the delight in being naked? Water, sun, air on our skin under the big big sky with no other thought than how good we feel?

Susan Harrow is the author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul. She runs a Media Consultancy where she helps everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs to celebrity chefs, entrepreneurs to authors grow their business through media coaching and the power of PR. For more information please contact her here.

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