This week was much harder for me than last week. The idea of not comparing myself to others is so firmly ingrained in my psyche and I spend a lot of my time comparing myself and falling short.

I don’t usually talk about this and I certainly don’t blog about it, but my mother is an abusive, angry, bitter woman, who was very mean to me.  Finally about a year ago, I had to cut her out of my life for good.  Not only was she still being mean to me, but worse she was starting to do it to my daughter.  I had tried to foster a relationship with her for most of my adult life, willing to overloook all the bad that had gone on, in the hopes that we could build some sort of family.  She just couldn’t stop herself from saying the most hurtful things – and I’m not just talking about little things… I’m talking about the big ones… things like: “Yeah, I just never felt maternal towards you”, and “You want to be a hula girl for halloween?  All you care about is showing skin, what are you, a whore?” (I was 10), and the always popular, 20 minutes after I gave birth to my son, “Let’s just hope you don’t get sick of being a mother like I did”.  Yeah, she was nasty, but I thought I could handle it.  I won’t even get into the danger she put me in on a regular basis, but let’s just say she shouldn’t have been allowed to raise children.  When she started to mess with my child, it all came to a head and I had to say goodbye for good.  I finally realized that she was going to try to destroy my daughter, the way she tried to destroy me.  I couldn’t let that happen and it was finally the catalyst that I needed to cut her off.  I was mourning something that never existed and I tried for years to make something out of nothing.  Obviously my Inner Mean Girl was fed by all of that vitriol and she has thrived for many years telling me just how lacking I am.

Now, I really don’t dwell on the past and I’m not one to publicly air my stuff like this, but I was moved by all the things I’ve read, written by other people doing the cleanse, and just people in general that I seem to be coming across lately, going through very similar situations and I decided to really explore why I still allow these mean things to be said to me, why I still listen to it and worse, why I’m saying them to myself.  Do I really believe that I don’t have anything to offer?  No, I know I have a lot to offer this world.  I have come quite far in this journey, but there’s one area where I’m just stuck.

Body Image is the nice way of saying it these days.  But Cruella (my inner mean girl) doesn’t say, “Christine, your body image isn’t what it should be”, she says, “look at how thin and gorgeous so and so is, you blob”, or “really?  Are you going to eat that? That’s why you’re so fat”, or the ever popular, “You think 20 minutes of exercise is going to help? Yeah, right – you’re hopeless”.  And she says these things all day long, every day.  How could I allow that?

Truth be told, I don’t know how to stop it.  As I sit here and write this, I wonder whose voice these things are being said in, and I’m horrified to realize that it’s my own. It’s not someone from a million years ago; it’s Christine. Right here, right now.

And it’s funny- it’s never about the other person, the person I’m comparing myself to.  I don’t begrudge anyone their success, or their good fortune, I truly believe that there’s enough in the universe for every single one of us.  I don’t feel any malice towards the other person, I guess because I realize that it’s so totally not about them. It’s about me.  Me and Cruella.

As for gratitude, I have plenty to be grateful for, I’ve had more than my fair share of good fortune and accomplishments.  I’m living almost the exact life that I want.  I could use a couple of extra dollars and and more than a couple of less pounds, but other than that, things are pretty good.  It’s really just this one area – funny, it is the area that my mother focused on most when denigrating me, but I’m 45 years old, it’s not her fault anymore and she’s not even in my life to be making these comments.  It’s me. Me and Cruella.

Now I just have to figure out how to distract her for the next 45 years… And ideas?

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform SchoolSimilar Posts:

• Giving Up Gossip
• What You Focus On Expands and What You Resist, Persists
• Blast from the Past
• Inner Mean Girl Reform School
• Can you stand one more

From their literature:

CardsDirect offers the very best in personalized greeting cards for business or personal use.  Over 2,000 card designs are available in categories that include holiday cards, birthday cards, thank you cards, photo cards, baby shower invitations, Baby Announcements and many more!  With free personalization and custom imprinted verse, CardsDirect offers an easy online ordering process and top quality cards with the best selection, customer service and pricing found anywhere.

So here’s what they want to do.  They would like one of my readers to have a great card giving experience this year and they’re going to give one of you 25 greeting cards, up to a $50 value!  All you need to do to enter is leave a comment.  If you’d like to Tweet it, or post it to Facebook, let me know in a separate comment on this post and that will get you an extra entry.  The contest will end on September 30th 2010 and is only open to US residents (sorry!). On October 1st, I’ll randomly pick a winner and you will get your redeemable code that day.

Exciting, right?

Full Disclosure: Cards Direct did agree to send me a gift of cards to thank me for helping them to bring their great product to you.  Full disclosure policy can be found here.Similar Posts:

• Venus Ribbon and Giveaway!
• Nikon P90 and Eye Fi
• Santa’s List
• I Enjoyed this Far too Much!
• Positives

So yesterday I was thrilled when this came in the mail!  It’s Gold’s Gym Dance Workout for the Wii, by Ubisoft.  I love to dance and really don’t do it like I used to – you know,  back in the day – (yeah, I said it).

So, this morning when I woke up and once again the weather wasn’t cooperating for pool cardio, I decided to give this a whirl.  I popped it in the Wii and went through the instructions.

It’s compatible with the Balance Board, but not necessary.  I don’t love the balance board because… well, I’m unbalanced.  Seriously though, it’s just not big enough to dance around on. I was surprised by the idea of using two controllers, but I picked them both up, filled out my profile info, picked a trainer and started to play.  Also, a much appreciated feature or lack thereof is that your avatar doesn’t get all “fluffy” when you put your real weight in – Hello Nintendo, I’m talking to you.

I did some Latin dancing and some boxing, both of which were a great workout and a lot of fun.

Then I started to explore some of the mini games.

Here I am, dodging the bulls in Matador.

And here I am practicing my sword fighting moves.  So Jedi.

All in all there were great, fun workouts and lots of instruction if you run into a problem. There was plenty of content to keep your workout varied and keep you (me) from getting bored.  Boredom is my worst enemy, but this looks like it might be a great tool for keeping myself on track.

I was selected by Ubisoft and Clever Girls Collective to be part of the Ubisoft Champions social media program. While Ubisoft provided me with this game to review, the opinions I’ve expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint. Ubisoft and Clever Girls Collective promote Blog With Integrity

Similar Posts:

• Tiny Dancer
• All Around the Internet Friday
• My Little Ballerina
• Giving Up Gossip
• Kidfetti, or How We Volunteered to Help and Received So Much More Than We Ever Imagined!

Not familiar with the Inner Mean Girl Reform School?  Check out this post!

Week 1 in the Inner Mean Girl Cleanse is about giving up gossip.  The discussion questions were:

1. What’s the cost of gossip?
2. What’s the benefit?
3. What’s the truth?

I don’t often participate in gossip and most of the people I know don’t either.  I’m not perfect and occasionally I do have moments where I feel slighted and my first reaction is to resort to hurtful words – but when I really look at it, it’s more about my feeling of inferiority that makes me want to pull someone else down with me and then I feel guilty for having that kind of spiteful reaction.  And that, in a nutshell, is the perfect explanation of my particular inner mean girl. She is all about the fear of not being good enough, of being inferior in some way or another.

So. I know that gossip isn’t good for me, or anyone else and I’m pretty good about dealing with it.  (again, not perfect, but pretty good).  I know I’ll keep working on that and continue to realize what and why I’m saying.  However, there was something very interesting about this week’s lesson and that was the realization that I’ve become more involved with celebrity gossip than I ever admitted to myself!  We all love a good snark, right?  Some clever repartee, maybe? Well, there are a couple of celebrity gossip sites that I read and I realized that participating in, reading about, or passing along information that’s not nice isn’t just bad if you know the person, it’s bad period.  And it’s not about the celebrity, it’s about me.  It’s more of the same feeling of inferiority, or superiority over said celebrity.  We don’t look to feel superior to someone if we’re already feeling good about ourselves, right?  It’s all tied together.

I realized that I was clicking through on links that were stories about who was getting divorced, who cheated on whom, what the wronged spouse got in the divorce settlement and because my focus is on improving my outlook in that area, I was able to see that I lot of what I was following on Twitter and Facebook were just gossip sites.  Interesting.  If you had asked me if I was “into” celebrity gossip, I would have emphatically told you that I had better things to do with my time. And then I might even have gone into a diatribe about what a waste of paper People, The Star, the Enquirer and the NY Post, really are.   Hmm…  Is that gossip about gossipers? So I hid those particular sites from my Facebook newsfeed and I’m not clicking through on gossipy news items on Twitter and apparently I was spending an awful lot of time on that. Yikes.

Christine Arylo talked about a different form of sneaky gossip in her post: You May Be A Gossip and Not Even Know It.

As an aside, part of the discussion was about “Being Impeccable With Your Word” and I realized it had been far too long since I picked up and re-read my copy of the Four Agreements.  Seemed like a good thing to do.  Have you read it?  Are you reading it now?

(affiliate link)

So why don’t you join me (affiliate link)? C’mon – it’ll be fun. Maybe we’ll learn a little bit about how to stop being so mean to ourselves.

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform SchoolSimilar Posts:

• Rainy afternoon
• Inner Mean Girl Reform School
• Five of My Favorite Inspirational Books
• My Inner Mean Girl Loves to Make Comparisons
• I’m so productive I can hardly stand it!

Do you have an inner mean girl?  I know I do.  And she’s really mean.  But she’s most especially mean to me. I know I shouldn’t listen to her, but I do – every day. I listen to her tell me that I’m not smart enough, or thin enough, or talented enough, or loving enough, or just… enough. And I know that I need to figure this out so that I don’t pass it on to my own daughter (my son too, but girls seem to be especially vulnerable).  So when I received an email from Stacey, the project manager, inviting me to be an Ambassador for  Christine Arylo and Amy Ahlers’ “Inner Mean Girl Reform School”, I knew I had to be a part of it.  You may remember back in February when I participated in “Madly In Love With Me Day“… Well this campaign is from the same people and I think it’s really important for not only me, but most of the women I know to stop being so hard on ourselves. So I’m taking part in this six week program to stop listening to such negative thinking and be more honest and loving with myself.

From the website:

Through our work with women around the world, we’ve identified six of the most self-sabotaging habits your Inner Mean Girl (IMG) uses – and the corresponding self-empowering and self-loving habits your Inner Wisdom can use to beat her every time! Take this cleanse and you will:

• Shift six of the toxic habits weighing you down (what’s possible without comparison, guilt and self-judgment?)
• Release bad habits that block deeper female connections (we need each other to survive this crazy world!)
• Pick up and strengthen habits that fuel you vs. drain you (who couldn’t use more good energy these days?)

And best of all, you will integrate these habits into your daily rhythm without having to put another to-do on your list. And, the IMG Cleanse is FREE! We believe so strongly that women want and need this shift that we are offering this 40-day cleanse for free for the first time ever.

So why don’t you join me (affiliate link)?  C’mon – it’ll be fun.  Maybe we’ll learn a little bit about how to stop being so mean to ourselves.

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform SchoolSimilar Posts:

• Giving Up Gossip
• My Inner Mean Girl Loves to Make Comparisons
• School, Books, Letters to the Editor
• S&TC
• What You Focus On Expands and What You Resist, Persists