If you’re looking for no kidding, no matter what role model for strength and tenacity, look no further than Joan Rivers. Although she may fool you with her flamboyant ways, this woman has been through the ringer and back. Lots of wisdom to be gleaned from her story of bouncing back.
http://thejuicywoman.blogs.com/my_weblog/2012/10/joan-rivers-a-role-model-for-strength-and-survival.html
Many times you may find yourself reaching for food when you’re not hungry. Maybe you don’t even give it a second thought, and just assume that you’re doing it because you have no self-control.
Don’t be so hard on yourself and automatically chalk it up to something wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. There are good reasons why you’re overeating.
Perhaps you can relate to this. For a lot of people who are facing uncertainty and fear with relationships, the future of their business or grieving losses and next steps, during these times it feels like your life is out of control.
If you’re stuck in a pattern of overeating, a part of you knows that the food won’t help for any longer than it takes to pass your lips.
But as long as you’re in a haze of thinking that you’ll never feel safe around food, and that you aren’t entitled to be happy until you lose weight, food will always have the upper hand and enslave you each time it calls your name.
Don’t blame or put yourself down when that happens. Because if you do, you’re working from the wrong end of the problem. It’s not what you’re eating. You have to look at what’s eating you! Stress.
I’m always on the lookout for role models because I’ve learned that it doesn’t make sense to try to reinvent the wheel. When I was going through tough times, I sought out biographies of people whose lives and lessons I could learn from to change my own circumstances. Joan Rivers’ book, “Bouncing Back: I’ve Survived Everything… and I Mean Everything and You Can Too!
Without a doubt this book is one of the most moving and inspiring books I’ve ever read. You may rat on Joan for the hundreds of cosmetic surgeries she’s had, but I’ll just bet that you don’t know the story of the woman behind the face you see. She’s a survivor, first and foremost.
Did you know that years before she became a comedienne she endured the suicide death of her husband, Edgar and that led to years of being estranged from her daughter, Melissa?
And because Edgar handled everything, she had no clue of finances or even doing something as simple as programming a VCR, balancing a checkbook or parking the car? She had to teach herself how to be independent.
Her career was shatteredwhen her talk show on Fox was cancelled and and NBC set up a boycott against her so that nobody would hire her. And then she was really down and out, she was sued for $39M. The point is that no matter how bad things got, and no matter how hard she was hit, she kept on getting back up again.
On facing hurt and moving on, Joan Rivers says:
“If you do nothing more each day than watch All My Children and smile at friends, sitting on a re-covered sofa and listening to “Put on a Happy Face” will still leave you feeling neutral. You have to get into gear. YOu have to move from surviving to thriving. You have to find rewarding ways to occupy your time-or else consider checking into an old age home.” – Joan Rivers
Now that’s an attitude that inspires me to keep on going. How ‘bout you?