Peace with your body!

After living in the USA for more than 5 years, I finally started understanding some things that I couldn't at the beginning.

How we perceive our bodies is one of these things.

Back in Brazil, people would look down on you if you would go to the gym many times a day, or even everyday. In some parts of the country going to the gym excessively means that you are not happy with your body, or maybe want to get the body shapes you see on TV.

Things are changing a bit over there, but not as much as here.

I remember that first time I was exposed to the idea of going to the gym regularly was with my ex-wife. She was a personal trainer and needed to be in shape, but the underline reason was to be accepted - by others and herself.

On that moment I realized how much impact the media and culture have on the American people, specially on women.

Years later, after working as a Life Coach with many women, talking to friends, reading and absorbing the culture, I realized how contradictory the food and body industry is.

And here is the exact moment it happened: A few weeks ago I was invited by a friend to see a speaker. My friend only told me the speaker was one of the best certified performance coaches in town. As a certified coach myself, I always want to learn more, see what others are doing and creating. So I accepted the invitation.

Talking to people at the entrance of the hotel, I discovered the event was about a health product. Right. Here I am wasting time in a direct marketing selling workshop. As I was there anyway, I decided to give a try and listen to the speech - or speeches.

A short woman, with a non-convincing team leader energy, came first to introduce the first speaker. She spoke loud and clapped her hands a couple of times, trying to get the small crowd excited. Some people responded, some made noises, and I thought everything was fake - like the people who go to the TV shows dressed in costumes and over excited.

The first speaker came, and shared how she managed to earn enough money to buy a Mercedes-Benz. With a memorized speech and almost robotic, she threw her pitch on how amazing the product was and how it had changed her life.

As she was sharing the wonders of the products, I asked myself if she was happy with what she was doing. She seemed stressed but full of energy, like when you drink a RedBull or coffee after a long day of work. She then mentioned how her skin got much better after she started using the products.

"PEACE with your body", I thought. Instead of taking care of her body, eating mindfully and choosing carefully what she put on her mouth, trying to understand the roots of the problem, she simply found a magical product that covered the outside symptom.

The second speaker came through. He was that so call "famous speaker" that my friend told me. His theme was money. He showed the public how them could make so much money sharing the product with other people. He spoke fast and was also fully charged, like the first speaker. Through his speech he mentioned how expensive it was to have a business, how he had a few and lost it, because of his wife, which he lost too. He also made sure to show the easy possibility to anyone become a top seller and make a good fortune selling the amazing product.

With many examples, both speakers shared the benefits of what they were selling - how great is to make so much money, how amazing they felt, etc.

That's when the book "Start with Why" came to my mind. In a simple but effective way, Simon Sinek explains in his book the difference between companies that start with WHY versus the ones that start with WHAT and HOW. According to him, the majority of the companies are great in sharing what they do, and how they do what they do. Only a few understand the power of why and use it to their benefits. Companies that focus on the WHAT and HOW abuse the manipulation  to make people consume their products or services. It's when you see "buy one and get one free", or "Tax Debate for this product", or "Win something if you buy our product".

This was exactly what both speakers and the company were doing. Showing the benefits, the wonders and trying to sell hard the idea that the product was good. It might be good, but by doing it I could't trust it anymore.

I thought about companies like Apple, which never tried to push their products. The company have such a clear WHY, that people just feel it, consume and love it like a cult.

I knew that it wasn't the speakers fault. The culture bombard us everyday with manipulations and lack of why's in order to sell what they produce.

More than that, it's the realization of how distorted the body and food industry is in our time. The government doesn't support small farmers (who usually produce better quality food), then support and give incentives to larger farmers (which usually produce food using chemicals), these larger farms then can sell their products for a cheaper price, which people consume more, which scientists then tell them that the food they are eating has not much nutrition because of the chemicals, which people then need to consume artificially made vitamins, protein and shakes.

As the population is becoming more aware of this damaging cycle, companies start creating "natural" formulas, with super food ingredients and extra concentration of fruits and vegetables in powder, which supposed to fill the lack of vitamins and proteins that our body would get naturally if we had natural food on the first place.

In the mist of this cycle, we add the unsatisfied mental state people get when they don't have the body they see on TV, with less weight, less wrinkles, less gray hair, with eternal energy, and sexy. 

PEACE WITH OUR BODY comes, when we accept that getting older is part of life, that the outside body is just 50% of a health body, that laughter is better than any medicine to keep young, that is easier - and cheaper, to understand and learn ways to manage your stress, pay attention in what and how you eat, than simply pop a drug to look and feel good for a while. 

At the end of the day, even with all the medicine and "great natural drugs" that exist in the USA, Italians, French, Germans and other 27 nationalities in the world live longer than Americans
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy).

When the speaker finished his speech, he offered a free box for everyone present. Without hesitation I went back to him and gave the box back, saying that they could give to someone else who would be more interested. He then asked me "Porque no? - Why not?, and I had to be honest "because I don't want it, thank you"