My Slides…

This week I am set to speak at Ignite Fitness on the topic of Body Love.  Just like my journey to body love putting together the slides, the outline has been a slow and steady journey full of avoidance and procrastination.

The task is to create a 5 minute story to share to an audience similar to a TED Talk with the visual effect of 20 slides that are timed at 15 seconds each.  I had a deadline of last Monday, September 10, 2012.

As you know the last few weeks of August and most of this month of September have been insane.  Therefore I used the work excuse that I didn’t have time to get the outline nor the slides done.  Monday, September 10 came and no slides. I received a gentle reminder from Erin regarding my slides and I was honest- nope not done yet. I started to put pressure on myself which meant I procrastinated further.

I used the following excuses to procrastinate working on the presentation:

• Find the perfect powerpoint template that is unique to my needs
• Oh I decided that it will look like my visionboard that meant finding a “corkboard” powerpoint template in the internet
• Deciding what each slide should be about
• Identifying the font
• Not having enough time to prep the pictures
• Not having enough time
• My computer is too slow to do it
• I am really tired
• This weekend was packed with a powerful experience that left me drained

After way too many excuses, I finally gave myself a deadline. I blocked the time needed to get it done. I started by just completing each slide with one or two sentences. After a couple of hours the whole presentation was done.

As I tackled each slide, I noticed why I was really avoiding doing the work looking back at my story and put in a slide show is hard. I started to have feelings for that little girl who was bullied growing up. I felt hurt and I noticed how I cope with life was the very thing that was hurting. I used food to cope and in the process I gained weight. I longed to be seen yet I found ways to be invisible and hide from the outside world.  I avoided feeling angry at others therefore I beat myself by purging 10 to 15 times per day.  Living with an active eating disorder wasn’t easy nor the process of recovery.

How much of that old belief system I continue to hold and that the process of healing really is counterintuitive.  Well I hope that in those 5 minutes I would be able to convey the journey that I now lovingly cherished.  That I get to inspired others who may be struggling with body image to really embrace it as a teacher in our lives.

Johnson and Johnson GIVEAWAY Winner!

LaTanya. Please email me your address to laura @ joyfulshimmy.com no later than Friday, September 22, 2012.