Big Is Beautiful! : Lessons for Living Happily With Your Plus Sized Body

When I Was 12 My Ballet Teacher Told Me to Lose Weight—Now I Teach Body-Positive Dance Classes

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I've just found 10, ways that won't work. Rockefeller "Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. Use what you have. Do what you can. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work. Watson "All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. I have never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down. Kettering "If you genuinely want something, don't wait for it--teach yourself to be impatient.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. Harv Eker "Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. Habit is what keeps you going. And guess what they have planned for you? Those things are what happen when you don't have a plan. You can't just accept the ones you like.

Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment. Chesterton "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Edison "The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

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They vary in their desires to reach their potential. It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that's where you will find success. Watson "Logic will get you from A to B.

Imagination will take you everywhere. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen. I'm thinking something along the lines of, 'Geez, he was just here a minute ago. Liking what you do is happiness. Be excited about what you want. It comes from not finishing what they've started.

If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment.

You seek problems because you need their gifts. Baruch "Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression, and respect. That thought is the problem. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

Happiness never decreases by being shared. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, then there will be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change, lies our happiness and freedom. Walk to the edge. Choose with no regret. Do what you love.

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Live as if this is all there is. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving. There is nothing to forgive. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. It is appreciating what you have.

Happiness is wanting what you get. Your creativity and happiness brings money. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.

It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. It's not what you're gonna get in the end--it's not the final curtain--it's really in the doing it, and loving what you're doing. Can you decide that your happiness can come from someone else's success? Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.

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But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them. Petit Senn "To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on. Barr "View your life from your funeral: Looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't?

What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what wouldn't you do? The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. Stevenson II "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. He is the one that gets people to do the greatest things. Do your thing, and don't care if they like it. A leader isn't someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.

The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men. Eisenhower "Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Kennedy "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

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Drucker "You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. It is the only thing. Maxwell "The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones. It is about one life influencing another. Maxwell "You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right.

If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

People look to me to do things for them, to have answers. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Ancient statues show us artists' idealized form, which for women featured largish hips, full breasts, and a not-quite-flat stomach. But the Greeks were defining more than just "beauty" — they were nailing down the math of attractiveness. Remember the Pythagorean theorem? Put simply, he found that in order to be considered "beautiful", women's faces should be two thirds as wide as they are long , and both sides of the visage should be perfectly symmetrical.

Symmetrical faces continue to be regarded as more beautiful today, so send your hate mail to "P'thag" if you're rocking — and owning — that asymmetry. The artists of the Renaissance wanted to move away from the modesty and strict religious values of the Middle Ages. So from , they started painting naked breasts that symbolized a mixture of fertility and sensuality. The idealized women of artists like Raphael were commonly curvy, pale but with slightly flushed cheeks, and soft, round faces.

Raphael admitted that most of his paintings were not based on real models , simply his imaginings of what a beautiful woman would look like. This was true for many painters. With the Renaissance began a transition — from simply considering women to be objects of fertility, to objects of lust and beauty. Queen Elizabeth was crowned in , ushering in the era of makeup. Having derived from a society, which, according to one Harvard paper , deemed a woman with a face-full of makeup to be "an incarnation of Satan," the year-old queen liberally slapped on the face paint — and that signature red lip.

This trending makeup routine quickly became a symbol of class at the time. The paler you were, the higher your status. Poor people had to work outside and get terrible tan lines, so the wealthy would show off their pale skin as a symbol of opulent indoor living. Also wanting to maintain her virginal image and later hide her smallpox scars in addition to flaunting her status, Elizabeth painted her face with a thick coat of white lead-based powder, and lip rouge.

Members of high society followed suit, likely due to the belief that lipstick "could work magic, possibly even ward off death," according to the paper. Not one to bail on her own brand, Elizabeth died, wearing "a half-inch of lip rouge" on her pout. After the French rebelled against the aristocracy during the French Revolution in , the people wanted to distance themselves from their disgraced royalty.

Makeup became much simpler and the insanely ornate gowns of the very rich were paired down. Though their dresses would seem pretty fancy for us today, it was a much more wearable and mobile way of dressing than in the past. Before the revolution, makeup was worn equally by men and women. As the idea of "artifice" found disfavor in society , both sexes opted for more natural looks.

But as memories of the revolution began to fade, and the country entered the 19th century, makeup for women in court gained popularity again.

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Though it was still criticized by some, the art of putting on makeup and getting dressed for the day became a sort of show that coquettes would perform for potential admirers. Elite women would literally invite spectators to watch them primp in various states of undress. Men were into it. But makeup for men stayed mostly unpopular, becoming a benchmark for the separation of women and men in society: Bell-shaped skirts known as crinolines became wider and wider, needing ever more petticoats, and even hooped supports.

No particular body part was emphasized — just so long as a women didn't look too hearty or strong. According to artist and researcher Alexis Karl , "Consumptives were thought to be very beautiful. Makeup of the time was also incredibly dangerous. Lead, ammonia, mercury, and nightshades were common ingredients. And the Victorian's weren't completely ignorant of the effects of these poisons. Women were simply willing to poison themselves in order to look more beautiful. Of course, male-dominated desire favoring weak, submissive women sparked the trend, so it wasn't like ladies all decided to kill themselves to look pale just for the heck of it.

The 's brought about the Gibson girl. The Gibson girl was an illustration by Charles Gibson that defined a beautiful woman of the age. From the turn of the century to the beginning of World War I , women everywhere tried to match the drawing. She was pale, though not as powdered as previous years.

She wore a tight corset, but the dresses were cut to show more of her figure her real figure — plus a bustle of course. A large bust was preferred, and, though it was still popular for girls to look a little soft and round, the trend towards a thinner ideal was beginning. The Gibson girl wasn't actually a real person, but Evelyn Nesbit, considered to be the world's first supermodel , was the closest match.

But it was a case of yet another standard of beauty invented by a man's drawing, rather than inspired by any existing woman. By the end of the s, many women were hitting the workforce during World War I. And after the war? They weren't about to give up all that independence. In , women scored the right to vote — and they weren't going to take the piled-up hair and corsets anymore! Flappers brought about a complete change in fashion and body type. Since they were gaining a taste of men's power, the ideal women's body became a more boyish figure.

For the first time, the curvy, fertile look was completely out. Girls wanted to look thin with no curves, and they were chopping their hair. Skirt hemlines were hiked up higher than ever, allowing women to move, dance, and finally have some fun. The flip side of the flapper movement? It's where our serious modern obsession with weight began. Before the '20s , it was difficult to weigh yourself unless you were very rich. Full length mirrors were also incredibly expensive, so only the wealthy had ever even seen their entire bodies. But, as bathroom scales were invented, it became very simple to notice exactly how thin or big you were.

The rise of department stores also gave working class women a chance to finally see all of themselves at once. That also meant they could see all of their flaws, thus igniting our contemporary version of body obsession. Unfortunately for flappers, the '20s ended badly and the Great Depression made fashion an afterthought. Most women weren't able to worry about having a skinny figure and the perfect clothes, so the ideal body type became slightly more full.

Because of a lack of resources, and then the rationing of World War II, women had to get creative with their clothes.

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