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Part two of a two-part post: Caitlin Boyle of OperationBeautiful.com and Gaby Montero of GivesMeHope.com both seem to say based on their experiences with being more positive and how people have responded to their motivational Web sites and blogs that we humans greatly underestimate thinking positively. My question is, "Do we give more power to negativity because we underestimate positivity?"
Caitlin believes that women who focus on the negative rather than the positive are sabotaging their lives.
In a phone call, she said to me that she's heard women say:
"I'm too fat to exercise." Or "I wake up in the morning, and I feel so ugly I don't even want to put on clothes to go out of the house." A lot of (these thoughts are) created by media pressure and social pressure. ... I've found through Operation Beautiful that positive self-talk can make a huge difference in fighting negative self-talk. That's the goal of Operation Beautiful, to try to be the antidote to this negative self-talk, but a lot of women have been ingrained to regurgitate it without thinking of consequences to themselves or the people who hear it. (Caitlin speaking)
I asked her to tell me her favorite story from Operation Beautiful. She debated which one to tell and then told me about a letter she received from a 17-year-old girl who was in a treatment program for anorexia. The girl, according to her letter to Caitlin, had been living off Slim-Fast shakes and refused to eat solid food. As a result, she suffered multiple health issues that threatened her life.
Her therapists decided to try aversion therapy and told her that she could not leave until she ate a 500-calorie, solid meal. She consumed the food but was so distraught about eating it that she went to the facility's restroom to vomit. Entering a stall, she closed the door and then saw posted on the back of the stall door an Operation Beautiful note.
"It said something like "You are beautiful as you are. You don't need to change. There's nothing about you that you need to fix." She didn't throw up the food," said Caitlin. Today the blogger, who has a book on Operation Beautiful coming out in August, keeps in touch with the teen.
Both Caitlin and Gaby live full lives. I couldn't speak to Caitlin immediately because she was running in the Disney Marathon. She finished and raised around $3,000 for cancer research.
When I tried to reach Gaby, I received an even more exciting reason why she couldn't be reached immediately. She said she would be out of touch for a few days because she'd taken her co-founder and fiancé, Emerson, into the Ecuadorian jungle to see the Amazon River. When she returned she wrote to me:
We just got back from the Amazon with Emerson a couple of days ago! He'd never been to the Ecuadorian Jungle and since he's already been here 3 times! (I'm from Ecuador, just fyi). So we went to this city called "Banos," which is an adventure town. We did some crazy things like rappelling, canopying, canyoning, white river rafting, bungee jumping etc! It was a crazy trip :) (Gaby)
I've been wondering about their lives. Are they full of energy and positivity because they're young and thin, or are they full of positivity and energy because they focus on the positive? However, when I was young I didn't run any marathons, nor did I take a boyfriend to see the Amazon.
I suspect the answer is both, but Caitlin credits the positive stories that come to her through Operation Beautiful with enriching her life.
I have the best job in the whole world to wake up every morning and see those notes and to prepare the posts. It's made me a happier person to see how much positivity is in the world. Sometimes we get really bogged down with all the negativity. It's easy to overlook the nice things in life, especially the little ones, but running Operation Beautiful has made me appreciate how nice people are, because people really are nice when you get down to it. People really do want to do good things for each other. Operation Beautiful has made me a happier person. (Caitlin)
In no way should that statement be construed to mean she was formerly unhappy. Her blog, Healthy Tipping Point, shows that this young woman works consistently at being healthy, while
