How to Talk to Your Body

As a volleyball champion and sports fashion model, Gabrielle Reece juggled the challenges of success in two worlds with demanding physical criteria. The impossibility of satisfying everybody’s demands quickly led her to realize that happiness could not be found via sculpting the perfect image. We asked Reece for her perspective on looking at the body without judgment, and she gave us a rundown of her best tips for finding something closer to love in our reflections. For more, listen in on her conversation with our chief content officer from In goop Health Vancouver. It’s up now on The goop Podcast.

Body Image

By Gabrielle Reece

These are some of the things that have helped me manage or improve my perception of my body or my relationship with my body. And when I’m about to look too closely into my self-judging mirror, I ponder these ideas again:

Focus on the parts you can control. I can’t change that I’m six foot three, but I can control how often I move and what fuel I put in my body.
Connect with your body as a tool. Your body is an avatar that can run, sing, hug, and do so much more. When we connect with our body as an instrument, not only do we have more fun but our relationship with our body becomes bigger than how it looks or how old it is.
Don’t bother comparing. Comparing is a path to unhappiness, and not a pretty one. Appreciate yourself. Admire the uniqueness in others.
Have some fun. Use your body to enjoy your life and take you through experiences. This is not just about how the world views you but also about what you are doing and the experience you are accruing in this body.
Build a good community. Seek individuals who lift you up, but also create a safe space to vent and show human insecurities. After all, we all have them. This same community will listen, and then tell you it’s enough now and let’s get back to the business of trying to focus on the inward feelings and external experiences—and not the external appearance.
Pick a partner (if you choose to be in a relationship) who empowers you and doesn’t tear you down.
Stop asking questions that feed the beast. “How do I look?” Forget it. It’s a setup. How do you feel? Are you focused on your sense of self and well-being?
Use how you feel and how you perform as your metric rather than the scale.
Celebrate where you are in this very moment. Nothing stays the same, so what do we hope to gain in comparing ourselves to the body we had ten years ago?
Judge yourself as you judge others. Never are we crueler or more unforgiving than we are to ourselves. Love has to start within before we can expect it to radiate outward.
Keep learning and try new stuff. This will be challenging. It gets you to connect with one of the most important parts of yourself: the student, the expanding and growing human.
Stay hydrated and don’t wear makeup to bed. Which leads me to number thirteen.
Get to bed. All the lists will be there in the morning and can wait.
Don’t make being PERFECT the goal. It’s unattainable and unachievable so why do we continually use that as our target? Perfect doesn’t exist, my friends. We know this, but we still torture ourselves with it. Let’s pick another goal.