Focusing Tip #780 – “I tell myself I look disgusting with extra weight”

Are you trying to change some unhealthy habits? Read on…

A Reader writes:

I’m trying to let go of this extra weight I’ve put on, yet I seem to lose my willpower and eat the wrong things whenever I’m bored or depressed. Which is often, these days. I put a recent photo of myself looking disgusting on the refrigerator but it didn’t help.

Dear Reader:

I know that pattern so well, trying to get myself to change unhealthy habits by self-shaming.

Back when I had writer’s block, I would try to get myself to write by calling myself “lazy” and “a failure.”

Did it help? It did not. But I didn’t know what else to try, and for a long time I felt stuck and unable to do what would make me happiest.

What I finally learned (with the help of Barbara McGavin) is that it was a part of me, a desperate part of me, that tried to shame me into changing.

Eventually I learned how to make a gentle relationship with that desperate part.

I, as Self-in-Presence, was finally able to turn toward the judgmental, shaming, critical part of me, and say, “It sounds like you are really worried about me.”

And then there is the other part. In your case, dear Reader, it’s the one that reaches for comfort food when bored and depressed. The one that IS bored and depressed more often these days.

You can picture yourself putting a loving arm around the bored and depressed part of you, and your other arm around the desperately worried part of you. “Hello, I am here with you both.”

When you’re able to take some time to cultivate these inner relationships, what starts to happen is that YOU make the decisions about what and when to eat… not a part of you. And without having to feel bad about yourself. It takes time and patience… but it does work.