If you could pick one aspect of yourself that you could change what would it be? What if I said you can’t change anything about your body? What then? Money maybe. Lots of money would be great. More freedom? A wonderful partner? Health? Ooh, clothes.
Defining what you really, really want our of your life is one of the most important things you can do. For many people, me included, the living of life has become such a task in itself that there’s not a lot of room left over to really think about the things that would make us very happy. But how can you get from here to there if you don’t know where there is.
When you’re doing this exercise do not think about how. How is not important. Think about it: any time you really want to do something you just decide you’re going to do it and then work it out as you go along. For instance have you ever moved house? It’s really complicated. You need to find a new home, finalise stuff with the old one, start it again at the new place and then somehow move everything. There’s a lot of stuff to manage. But, when you choose to do it you just do it and deal with things as they come up until you’ve achieve your goal, in this case moving house.
Achieving any goal or dream is exactly the same. To our brains there’s no difference between moving house or building wealth, or whatever your dream might be. Except the belief that we have and the thoughts that we think about it.
That’s the key, the thoughts that we think, and for many people, me included, weight and body image issues have intruded. They’ve become the centre of our lives around which we function. Thoughts about body size, fat, ugliness, failure, disappointment and frustration are constant companions and getting past that to actually think about what would bring us joy and fulfilment seems like a reward we didn’t earn.
Or, if we do think about what we really want, it’s inevitable loosing weight. That is what we really, really want. To be free of those thoughts and most especially, to be free of the weight. This time. It’s just a question of will power and this is what you really want and you believe you can do it. This time. And so begins another diet.
So why doesn’t it work? If you’ve defined that what you really, really want is to loose weight, you have a plan and you’re following it, why doesn’t it work.
But, is it really, really what YOU want? For a lot of people they think they want to be thinner, but what they really want is to be accepted. Or they want rewarding close relationships with people. Or they want to attract a fantastic guy or girl, they want to have fabulous clothes, they want to be famous, they want to be successful, they want a whole bunch of things that they think being thinner will bring them. And don’t fool yourself, being thinner will help with achieving all those things, that’s how society is trained to function.
But being thinner is not necessarily going to help you feel good, which is at the heart of what achieving your dreams is all about. Because, the thing is, to get those things, you have to be someone other than who you already are. And maybe that’s not what you really want.
Think about what you want, what would make you truly, deeply happy. It’s an amazing gift.
Lisa
Leave a Reply