We can re-choose and make friends with fear to take our power back so we don’t have to eat over our emotions. Fear is nothing more than a blinking light on the highway of life that says this makes me comfortable and this makes me uncomfortable. It’s a directional sign that says turn back towards the being-ness to get tethered back inside to where your true power is.
I have this acronym about fear: Friendly Emotions Acknowledging Right Action. It is a human-ness reaction to keep us safe from the danger that the ego has hijacked to keep us stuck and our power tethered to other humans. If we give power to our fear, we’ll stay stuck. If we deny fear the power and puff up our heart’s desire then the fear will dissipate and disappear. Our heart’s desire will come through. It’s a matter of re-choosing. Re-train and re-choose our reaction to FEAR. Friendly Emotions Acknowledging Right Action. See fear as a guide to make a different choice.
Another way to look at it is that fear is a sure sign that we’re listening to She, He, It, Them. It’s a warning light that we’ve chosen wrongly. We can always re-choose anytime, anyplace. We can’t control She, He, It, Them. The only control we have is self-control.
Don’t not confuse fear with fact. When we get scared and terrified, turn the volume down and ask is it fact or fear? Is it “old stuff” coming forward? Am I to be guided to something? Do I have a conflict? Confusion? Fact or fear? What can we do to change our perception? Connect with the being-ness inside. To be set free, we say to ourselves I release She, He, It, Them. I release these feelings; I release the fear and set myself free. The moment we choose the journey from fear to freedom, we choose the thoughts that will give us the power to grow, to develop, to become. Our thoughts are the dream or the nightmare we choose to live in. Most dreams die on fear. We have the power to choose either one.
If we choose fear versus freedom, and we turn to the food, we won’t find the solution to our problem. The solution was never found in the problem. Here’s a quote that I like: “Evil does not spring from the soil and trouble does not sprout from the earth. People are born for trouble as predictably as sparks fly upward from a fire.” We’re going to experience problems as sure as sparks fly upward from a fire. And if we’ve been taught to not trust ourselves, our feelings, our human-ness is going to fight to be louder and more invasive than our being-ness. The vibration will rise to a level that we then label confusion. We have to re-choose to come from being-ness and trust that all the answers are there and the solution will be found. The solution is always found in something that will work, i.e. not why but how.
But it’s important to understand that choice can create confusion and set off fear. How? When we choose to give birth to our heart’s desire, when we choose to create the desired weight loss relationship, its helpful guiding chaperone – fear - always shows up and so seeks to frustrate us. Confusion then joins in. Confusion is nothing more than a conflict between human-ness and being-ness. It’s akin to a child throwing a tantrum. The confusion and frustration grows louder and louder in our minds. That’s when we want to run to the refrigerator and eat our way into quieting the clamor inside. But the eight minutes of reprieve is the living nightmare of what we’re trying to get away from. The next 23 hours and 52 minutes we have to live with the choice that we’ve made. The cycle begins again. We can choose to continue the cycle or we can choose to change. We can choose to have faith.
We’ve all heard people say, “Have faith.” What does that mean? Some good little fairy is going to take care of everything? No. In my experience, I believe faith is nothing more than a choice. When we choose faith in our being-ness we trust ourselves and beingness to choose to make the choice that is right for us. Then we get the grace we were seeking all the time. Faith is trust in being-ness where all our trust and power reside. Remember that the only control we really have is control over our thoughts. We can make a choice to be controlled by negative thoughts or we can let go and reconnect with our being-ness and trust in the choices we make.
Choose trust, have faith and get the grace.
Next time:
Put the fork down and pick yourself up!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Starting with the Mind
When deciding to stop fighting with ourselves and start fighting for ourselves by confronting emotional eating or any addictive behavior, it’s critical to start with the mind. Our minds are where our problems start and where the solutions lie.
In my experience food is 5% of the problem. Just 5%! And I believe that 95% of the problem is the mental weight between our ears i.e. our minds. I don’t care if it’s weight loss, drug addiction, gambling--whatever. Our food behavior is just a "reaction" to how we’re living in our heads. So the problem isn’t what’s on our plate. That’s a reaction. It’s what’s in our minds. And the way to obtain and maintain a healthy body weight for life is to address the "creation" of the reaction. It’s not what’s on the plate; it’s the plate in our head. And if we don’t deal with the problem, where it was created, if we just take care of the reaction, then we’re kidding ourselves. It’s just going to come back. We lose the weight and then we gain it back plus more. The cycle continues.
So the work needs to come from the inside out. 95% of the problem is in our minds, then 95% of the work is on the inside, in our minds, and 5% is on the outside, what’s on the plate.
Think of it this way. We have two warring forces inside of us. We all have different ways of describing it. But let’s talk about it in a way that everyone can relate to and understand.
We’re human beings.
It’s that simple.
The first force is human-ness. It’s the critical self. It’s the voice that says, “I’m not good enough. I can’t do anything right. I don’t wear the right clothes. I don’t drive the right car.” And so on. It’s all the things we say when we become disconnected from our being-ness.
Being-ness has a long list of names...the Light within, Energy, Source, Breath, Holy Breath, God, Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Christ, this list is long. Whatever team we want to be on is the one we choose to be on. It doesn’t matter what we call it. What’s important to know is that when we become disconnected from that “Being-ness” then we start living from the outside in, from our human-ness. The “Human-ness” critical self, ego, addiction, our little terrified selves steps in and we are disconnected from our powerful selves.
I believe we’re trained from an early age to disconnect from ourselves. It’s very easy to teach a child not to trust what they’re feeling, to not trust them selves. So as adults we naturally don’t trust that what we’re feeling is true and real. We trust what others tell us. That’s what we’ve learned. And when we’re tethered to others (or a cute acronym I like to say -- She, He, It, Them -- S.H.I.T.) then they have all the power. But when we connect to our being-ness, to the energy source within, then we have the power of choice back. We have the power to feel. And the power of choice gives us the power to make the changes we need to make. We don’t stay trapped in the outer world, the human-ness. We dwell in the inner being-ness. And when we live in that place then we can connect with the God in others. Again, it doesn’t matter what we call it. It matters that we reconnect from within.
Intense training negates instinct. We begin to live from the outside in. We don’t trust ourselves. Learning to live from our being-ness, from the inside out, requires retraining or better yet, un-training.
If we want to be healed from emotional eating then we must embrace that emotional part of us and not be afraid to go there. It is out emotional guidance out and through to freedom. Don’t judge the emotions; embrace them. They’re nothing more than blinking lights on the highway of life. When we’re uncomfortable, we need to turn back towards that being-ness.
I know that every time I’ve lived from my human-ness, I have failed. I turned myself into a 260-pound woman busting out of size 24, wondering why I wasn’t living the life I wanted? I mean, I did everything they told me to do, every thing I was trained to do. But when I started to look inward and ask, “But where am I? What’s my truth? Who’s having this conversation?” it became easier to make the choices I needed to make.
And it’s been my experience that’s it’s the same for all of us who seek to be free from the weight. Well, the wait’s over. Let’s re-choose and take our power back and live out our heart’s desire!
Next week: Going Within…Making friends with Fear.
In my experience food is 5% of the problem. Just 5%! And I believe that 95% of the problem is the mental weight between our ears i.e. our minds. I don’t care if it’s weight loss, drug addiction, gambling--whatever. Our food behavior is just a "reaction" to how we’re living in our heads. So the problem isn’t what’s on our plate. That’s a reaction. It’s what’s in our minds. And the way to obtain and maintain a healthy body weight for life is to address the "creation" of the reaction. It’s not what’s on the plate; it’s the plate in our head. And if we don’t deal with the problem, where it was created, if we just take care of the reaction, then we’re kidding ourselves. It’s just going to come back. We lose the weight and then we gain it back plus more. The cycle continues.
So the work needs to come from the inside out. 95% of the problem is in our minds, then 95% of the work is on the inside, in our minds, and 5% is on the outside, what’s on the plate.
Think of it this way. We have two warring forces inside of us. We all have different ways of describing it. But let’s talk about it in a way that everyone can relate to and understand.
We’re human beings.
It’s that simple.
The first force is human-ness. It’s the critical self. It’s the voice that says, “I’m not good enough. I can’t do anything right. I don’t wear the right clothes. I don’t drive the right car.” And so on. It’s all the things we say when we become disconnected from our being-ness.
Being-ness has a long list of names...the Light within, Energy, Source, Breath, Holy Breath, God, Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Christ, this list is long. Whatever team we want to be on is the one we choose to be on. It doesn’t matter what we call it. What’s important to know is that when we become disconnected from that “Being-ness” then we start living from the outside in, from our human-ness. The “Human-ness” critical self, ego, addiction, our little terrified selves steps in and we are disconnected from our powerful selves.
I believe we’re trained from an early age to disconnect from ourselves. It’s very easy to teach a child not to trust what they’re feeling, to not trust them selves. So as adults we naturally don’t trust that what we’re feeling is true and real. We trust what others tell us. That’s what we’ve learned. And when we’re tethered to others (or a cute acronym I like to say -- She, He, It, Them -- S.H.I.T.) then they have all the power. But when we connect to our being-ness, to the energy source within, then we have the power of choice back. We have the power to feel. And the power of choice gives us the power to make the changes we need to make. We don’t stay trapped in the outer world, the human-ness. We dwell in the inner being-ness. And when we live in that place then we can connect with the God in others. Again, it doesn’t matter what we call it. It matters that we reconnect from within.
Intense training negates instinct. We begin to live from the outside in. We don’t trust ourselves. Learning to live from our being-ness, from the inside out, requires retraining or better yet, un-training.
If we want to be healed from emotional eating then we must embrace that emotional part of us and not be afraid to go there. It is out emotional guidance out and through to freedom. Don’t judge the emotions; embrace them. They’re nothing more than blinking lights on the highway of life. When we’re uncomfortable, we need to turn back towards that being-ness.
I know that every time I’ve lived from my human-ness, I have failed. I turned myself into a 260-pound woman busting out of size 24, wondering why I wasn’t living the life I wanted? I mean, I did everything they told me to do, every thing I was trained to do. But when I started to look inward and ask, “But where am I? What’s my truth? Who’s having this conversation?” it became easier to make the choices I needed to make.
And it’s been my experience that’s it’s the same for all of us who seek to be free from the weight. Well, the wait’s over. Let’s re-choose and take our power back and live out our heart’s desire!
Next week: Going Within…Making friends with Fear.
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