I recently found myself reading the comments on a Youtube video. This horrible time-suck got me thinking. You see, this video was a woman that was pushing her diet ideas and happily promoting her healthy lifestyle. While I think her approach to improving other people's health is flawed (read Body, Mind and Sport for an overview of what I do think works for optimizing your health), I thought her confidence and happiness was lovely. Obviously, not every commenter would have agreed. One woman referred to her as being "full of herself".
I found myself reflecting on this statement. If you aren't full of yourself, then what the hell are you full of? What is so wrong with a woman being confident in her body and her choices? Having dealt with a near lifetime of self-esteem issues, I am pretty proud to be confident about myself, my body, my everything. Sure, I do things and say things that aren't great, but that doesn't mean I'm not great, it just means I make mistakes, like all other humans on the planet. It also doesn't mean that my life is easy. I encounter obstacles within and without myself constantly. But I have learned to work on my negative traits, to let go of dramas that don't matter, and to embrace the difficult changes that sometimes surface.
When we speak negatively about someone being full of himself/herself, I would argue that we are typically referring to a woman. When we discuss the same traits in a man, we use words like "proud", "strong", or "independent". The same traits in a woman, for some reason or another, are unwelcome. I would also argue that mostly women abuse the phase "full of herself" in reference to other women. Maybe it's jealousy, perhaps personal despair, regardless, it ruins our collective psyche, limiting the sum of our potential. It says, "Stay quiet, woman. You are not worthy."
This past weekend, I was teaching a restorative yoga workshop. I spent some time discussing how truly happy I am in my life at this moment, "blissed out", as I like to call it. I feel that finding balance in the chaos of life with true rest and rejuvenation brings me this happiness. It helps that I have an amazing little family, too. But as these words fell out of my mouth, I immediately felt guilty. Isn't it funny that I would feel guilty about sharing my happiness? It isn't really funny. It's totally normal, because proclaiming one's happiness with life, body, love, etc. is "being full of yourself". But, when I put all of these words together on this page and reflect, I want nothing less than being full of myself.
