Growing up in Los Angeles, unhealthy body image was a birthright. As I watch my two five-year-old girls develop relationships to their bodies, and moreover to how they are perceived (they each obsess in the mirror, change outfits frequently, posture and pose like one of Vogue’s up and coming), I wonder what interventions – besides not raising them in Los Angeles – I can enact to help them develop positive self-regard. We eat well. I model an active, healthy as the norm. I try not to let them see me assess myself—changed postpartum body, fine lines that will soon become wrinkles, a graying hairline. I’d love to save them the burden of negative body image and consequent disordered eating. And—I don’t want to introduce ideas that would pathologize them inadvertently. How do I help them practice loving self-acceptance without making them aware that some people, (their momma included until she learned not to), practice self-abuse? What if they simply grew up—even into and out of teenagehood—loving themselves? Could I break this generational cycle of self-abuse?

I was looking over my 2024 book* on postpartum healing, and I came across a concept I call the awareness-acceptance axis. (Funny what you can forget you wrote—I’ll chalk it up to mom brain.) Turns out, I’ve already written a prescription for my girls that I’ve begun to dose them with. For any parent also seeking to help her children love themselves, as they are…here’s the formula.

I think of awareness and self-acceptance existing on intersecting axes. Think high school algebra, the x and y-axes, and a graph that represents positive correlation. The greater the awareness we cultivate, the greater self-acceptance we are capable of experiencing. Let’s add one additional variable: compassion. This is the z-axis, the third line that turns this two-dimensional concept into a three-dimensional living equation. When we are present with our experience, in acceptance of our experience as it is, we can choose to infuse it with compassion instead of judgement.

The awareness-acceptance-compassion equation doesn’t equal complacence—anything but! Present-moment evaluation is your greatest asset in the amelioration of any challenge you face, or any change you seek. It’s the avoidance of seeing things as they are that contributes to greater disease. As Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations: “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” When our mind is clear and present, we can face whatever arises, engage the clarifying lens of discernment, and chart the best path forward.

Awareness Begets Choice. The crux of this work rests in the fact that when we cultivate awareness, we afford ourselves the space to make choices. Awareness is the progenitor of choice. That we can see a shaking muscle as strengthening is born from having extricated the mind from unconscious patterns of negative self-perception in which that shaking muscle was weak and would always be weak. When relieved of the burden of judgement, we can discern a path forward, even one that can lead to greater physical fitness.

Sometimes we think we need to unravel those complicated negative thought patterns until we find their roots. Yes, sometimes that deep dive into personal history can be useful and fruitful. And—yoga teaches us that present-centered appreciation is enough to choose another way forward. You don’t need to follow all thoughts down the rabbit hole of psychotherapeutic excavation. You can say instead: I’ve identified a long-trodden pattern, one likely with me since early childhood. Now, in this present moment, I will choose another way, one that invites ease, strength, acceptance and love of self.

It’s Like This Now. These four words form one powerful meditation. When pulled into past and future appraisal, I offer this antidote. Saying this phrase inserts just enough of a pause to interrupt the thought-feeling cascade. Instead, the speaker is called to notice the present moment. It’s like this now implies that it was like something else before, and will be like something else in the future. These four words are a recognition of the change that is always occurring—and that acknowledgement can be medicine to the mind that is stuck in patterns of negative self-evaluation.

Make this a meditative mantra and repeat it alongside each breath. Inhale. Exhale and notice that “It’s like this now.” Let the mind be absorbed by the feeling of the present moment. In the space of awareness generated by It’s like this now, you can choose to notice the feeling, to wrap the feeling in the salve of love and acceptance, and to watch it pass.

Gratitude Changes the Brain. If you ask my six-year-old what his mommy’s favorite phrase is, he’ll tell you: Focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have. We can choose to perceive what we lack, or what we have—and what we make our focus can change everything. Practicing gratitude is powerful medicine that, we are learning, makes use of the pharmacy stored in our brain. Recent research suggests that dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the experience of reward, may also be associated with gratitude (Liu, Gong, Gao, & Zhou, 2017). Feeling gratitude floods the brain with the same endogenous medicines as are activated when you’ve achieved something. Research also suggests that pro-social tendencies like gratitude may promote resilience to depression (Dai & Smith, 2023). Additionally, dopamine is associated with action; when you increase dopamine, you’re more likely to re-engage in the behavior that informs the initial influx. That is, gratitude helps initiate a kind of neurological virtuous cycle.

Gratitude is the next layer of the awareness-acceptance-compassion process. It is the gift of awareness plus choice. When we become aware that our challenges can also be the source of a profound degree of self-acceptance, compassion, and positive change, we can choose to feel gratitude—for the thorns that proceeded the rose, and for the mud that birthed the lotus.

Practice Gratitude. A gratitude practice can be as simple as making a mental list of things for which one feels grateful. It’s a good start to a day, or a finish, or an in-between practice when the mind needs a kick start in a positive direction. Gratitude practices abound in pop culture and pop psychology alike. It’s easy to be grateful for the comfortable things in life. Try finding gratitude for the things that challenge. The blessing we praise is implicitly connected to some darker circumstance. A torn-up ankle and reconstructive surgery brought me to yoga. A series of life challenges brought me to life's work as therapist. Every ounce of lemonade is connected to a lemon. As Rumi writes, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

I offer the following: Look for the light around the edges of even the darkest circumstance. It’s always there—if only in the knowledge that the challenge is temporary, because everything is temporary. Even in moments of greatest pain, choose to see the light. The mind sees what the mind sees, until it is directed elsewhere. Choosing to perceive the light primes the senses to that light and makes living in the light more possible. This is the gift of discernment at work.

And so, I’ll find simple ways to offer my children moments of attentive awareness. I’ll remind them of the power of seeing themselves as they are, loving themselves as they are, choosing to see the gift of challenge in the difficult task and strengthening muscle. And, I’ll teach them every day about gratitude. I don’t have power over the physical or mental paths their lives will take, but I can at least offer them tools to help them navigate. Hopefully, they’ll be able to avoid some of the pitfalls I suffered—undoubtedly finding their own ruts, and teachings, along the way.

*© 2024 Singing Dragon. Reprinted with permission. This article may not be reproduced for any other use without permission.