How To Embrace Your Curves (Psst...Not The Ones On Your Body)!

Have you ever taken a trip down memory lane?

I did this past Sunday, when one of my aunts had a little ‘memorabilia fest’ at her home.

Between the good food, the great company, and the hundreds of old photos and old letters my late grandfather and others had written, this little ‘memorabilia fest’ was, well, memorable…

As I was combing through childhood photos of me (and seriously questioning some of my wardrobe choices at the time!), I found a letter my aunt had written to her mother in 1977.

In it was mostly mundane kind of stuff…

Until my aunt referenced this husband/wife couple her parents had been friendly with…writing that the encouragement they’d offered her really helped her overcome many years of feeling as if she was “less than” as compared to her two older brothers.

Reading this, I paused, put the letter down temporarily, and felt enormous empathy for my aunt.

I felt I understood why she had written this at the time…

When you think about your life, would you say you’re a “straight-liner” or a “zig-zagger”?

You see, her two older brothers (who are two of my favorite people, by the way) are what society calls ‘straight-liners’.

What’s a ‘straight-liner’? Someone who grows up, goes to college, goes to work – in the field they’ve known they’ve wanted to enter since childhood, gets married, buys a house, has kids…

In other words, someone for whom everything in life has pretty much always happened on schedule.

In a straight line.

(Or at least, from the outside, we think it has…)

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a ‘straight-liner’. Really, there isn’t. Society tells us this is what we should all want to be.

But when your life has been a little bit more curved, shall we say, it can be hard to not feel like my aunt did all of those years ago…like you’re “less than”.

How to embrace the ‘zigs’ and the ‘zags’ of your life and abandon that straight-line thinking once and for all!

Maybe you had to try a few things to figure out what you wanted to do…

Or maybe life threw you a few curve balls that caused you to have to “go around or in between” rather than straight ahead…

Or maybe you just had so many interests and wanted to take the time to pursue them…

Whatever the case, according to society, this may make you a ‘zig-zagger’ (for lack of a better term).

Having trouble embracing the ‘zigs’ and the ‘zags’ of your life – or of someone else’s?

Try this…

: | Remember, life’s a journey – embrace the twists and turns.

When did we seemingly forget that life was supposed to be a journey? And where is it written that there’s only one definition of what makes up a happy and successful life?

Nowhere is this written. Yet we’ve all – ‘straight-liners’ and ‘zig-zaggers’ alike – accepted this societal norm as “truth”.

My dear ‘zig-zagger’, maybe it has taken you more time than others to figure out what you wanted to do. Maybe you did have some very real and unfair obstacles thrown your way. Maybe you had the courage (others didn’t!) to test this out or test that out…

And maybe you’re thinking of yourself as ‘less than’, as not good enough – as not as good as the ‘straight-liner’…

Don’t.

Hear me when I say this, and take my advice to heart…

Instead of looking back on your life and seeing a life of struggle, look back and see a courageous life of exploration. {<– Tweet this!}

: | Find the advantages to your path – they’re there.

Yes, maybe the path of the ‘straight-liner’ is (or looks) easier in some ways.

But maybe the curved path is more exciting in other ways and has its own unique advantages, advantages that could also benefit the ‘straight-liners’.

Like, I would argue, my dear ‘zig-zagger’, that the enormous gifts you pick up along the way of your curved path – gifts like empathy, resilience, patience, tolerance, self-awareness, worldliness, the list goes on – are gifts that are sometimes never found along that straight and narrow path…

And are gifts that not only serve you well in your own life, but allow you to serve others in the most meaningful of ways.

And isn’t that what life is ultimately about…serving others?

So, embrace your curves…not only on your body, as so many fitness gurus say, but in your life.

:: ::

Here’s the thing, and this is not to take anything away from the ‘straight-liners’…

But we tend to think that they’re the ones who are doing life right and the ‘zig-zaggers’ are doing life wrong. Have you ever considered, my dear ‘zig zagger’, that YOU are the one who’s really got life down pat?

At the very least, the next time you’re with a ‘straight-liner’, dare them to zig and to zag a little… 🙂

Know someone who needs to embrace the ‘zigs’ and the ‘zags’ of their life a bit better and could benefit from this post? Please share it with them by using one of the share buttons at the top or bottom of this post, or emailing them this URL: http://beyourselfandtherestwillfollow.com/embrace-your-curves/

To embracing the curves and the straight lines alike,