Method 3: Feel the Rhythm of Life
The right brain learns kinesthetically, through the movement of the body. Certain ways of moving activate the SEEING of the right hemisphere. The next time you're reeling from a self-esteem wallop, do the last thing logic would advise: dance. If you absolutely won't dance, engage in another activity that requires repetitive, rhythmic action—swimming, drumming, skiing, whirling like a dervish (the reason dervishes whirl is because it pushes them into right-brain awareness). I've felt this transform my perceptions while running, skiing, and learning to track rhinoceroses in the African wilderness. If you don't have a rhinoceros handy, dancing is your best bet.
The Payoff
I told you these solutions for self-esteem wallops would sound weird and illogical, so I won't argue if you go ahead and schedule more liposuction and Botox. Use every weapon in our society's arsenal against imperfection—but remember that Father Time, that treacherous bastard, has a lot more ammunition. When you're faced with incontrovertible evidence of this, just try falling into SEEING, rather than the SEWER. Learn to switch on the awareness in which mortality is not calamitous and in which you are obviously, empirically, eternally, breathtakingly beautiful.
If you do this, you'll find that culturally defined Barbie-doll beauty becomes steadily more boring. You'll find loveliness in the asymmetrical, the wrinkled, the lumpish, and the strange. The very thing your rigid mind finds ugliest may be what your true self loves most. Self-esteem wallops will become gentle nudges, then welcome reminders to "run the deep inner peace circuitry" in your brain. You'll win the war against your body by becoming its everlasting, compassionate, clear-eyed ally. Now, ain't that a kick in the head.
Martha Beck is the author of The Joy Diet (Crown). Her most recent book is Steering by Starlight (Rodale).
Related Resources
From the June 2008 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine
Subscribe & Save up to 78%
Discover more ways YOU can live your best life in every issue. O, The Oprah Magazine
