A woman I know frequently brings up her weight and her body in conversation. It's clear how defeated she feels. She complains about how hard she works and still can't lose the weight that she put on with her last pregnancy.

So I mentioned to her the work I'm doing with women which is all about shifting the body conversation to a completely new place, which gives us a whole new set of tools to work with and a completely different and more positive way to be with our bodies.

I watched her face close down as she took in what I was saying, as she processed it through her filters, labeled it, judged it and responded before I'd even finished speaking. She said, with quite a bit of heat, "I know just what you mean. It's so wrong that we're judged by our bodies. But that's the way the world is. And there's nothing for us to do but live with it."

This made me curious. So I started asking people I knew if they thought the judgment that we put on people, based on weight and body appearance, is as it should be. Nobody—not one—said yes. Interesting. Fascinating.

How many of us are living our lives according to beliefs we don't even agree with? Not only in terms of body but in all aspects of our lives? And then we live out those beliefs by measuring ourselves against them, judging ourselves, depriving ourselves, beating ourselves up, limiting our own experiences.

Guess what—we can't really know what "the world" thinks. First, there is no single "the world" thought. And, we can only see "public opinion" (or anyone else's for that matter) through our own filters. If we believe the world "thinks" something, then somewhere we're bought in to that thought, too.

If we disagree with these beliefs we have a couple of choices. We can play victim, as my friend did in that moment and continue to live in conflict with ourselves—at war with reality and our own bodies. And if this works for you, by all means, do it.

OR we can use this opportunity to apply Gandhi's principle and be the change we want to see in the world. If we disagree with the way we see our own—and each other's—bodies, change that. Take responsibility for creating change where we can effect it—in our own minds and lives.

We can start by becoming responsible for our own beliefs and experience. If we don't think others should judge us for our weight, then we should stop judging ourselves, and others, first.

This has tremendous energy. Perhaps you can think of a time when your thinking was changed by the opinions of those around you. By living what we truly believe, we may giving untold numbers of people just the permission they've been waiting for to step into owning their own beliefs and experience.

And before we know it, we'll have created a movement that just might change the world. And at the very least will change our own lives (which counts, come to think of it.)

We are where change begins. If you truly believe the way we think about weight should be different, how could you start to live that belief?

It opened me up to the idea that we may be living our lives according to beliefs we think are commonly held, which may not actually be commonly held at all. I saw that I can't expect someone else to change a belief that I'm not willing to change myself. In particular, if I disagree with the way the world sees women's bodies, it's up to me to change the way I see my body first.