When did you first pick up the corset of comparison and try it on for size?
Perhaps it was when you were little and the time came to leave the safe confines of home and enter the wider world of school? All of a sudden your world shifted shape from a place of innocent self-expression and freedom to an environment of performance and grades; a crash course in learning what was acceptable and prized by the new adults in your world as well as by your peers.
You began to notice what others looked like and what they had in comparison to yourself. You became aware of what others could do academically or physically and began to measure yourself against this new benchmark. You started to make connections between this information and your position in the playground pecking order. By the end of primary school, the word ‘popular’ was probably well and truly part of your internal vocabulary.
When did that corset start to tighten?
As you grew older and entered high school the unspoken rules began to add up; how you were to act, the body you were supposed to have, the clothes you were expected to dress that body in, when you were supposed to give that body away, how smart was smart enough, or perhaps it was safer not to be smart at all. Assessing, adjusting, putting on, taking off, all the time tightening ….
Leaving school didn’t necessarily bring relief. As the years went by new laces were threaded into the corset; what career was good enough, were you still single in a world of couples, were you childless amongst the families? And always, always the critical eye focused on your body.
And here you stand today. Take a moment and let your awareness turn inward. How tight, right now, is that corset of comparison? Can you sense it laced around your ribs, squashing your beautiful tummy, changing your shape, restricting your breath? Are you able to see how it determines the way you walk in the world? It’s virtually impossible to move freely when you are bound so tightly. Layers of expectation have been laid down over the years, blurring your authenticity and leaving you with a cookie cutter version of your true self.
What would it be like to be free of the bondage of comparison; to undo those laces and take off that corset, to throw it on an imaginary bonfire and watch it burn? Envisage the pleasure of feeling your abdomen and lungs expanding with precious air. What would it be like to be able, perhaps for the first time in a very long time, to let yourself truly breathe? Imagine!
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