Setbacks, we all have them:
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We have them when in a moment of emotional pain we eat the entire gallon of ice cream.
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We have them when we have been training successfully for 2 months and then hit a plateau and become discouraged.
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We have a setback when we have successfully lost a lot of weight, received accolades and acknowledgement from our friends and family, only to gain all the weight back.
It is not the setback that defines us, but rather how we respond to it.
If you never quit, you can never fail, and anyone who has tried to lose weight understands how discouraging a setback can be. A Setback can makes us feel:
ashamed, inadequate, inferior or angry in some way.
A setback can bring out our deepest fears and knock us clear off the path to achieving our goal.
A Setback can be your greatest nemesis….
…..Or it could be the greatest opportunity! An Invitation to awaken your Power and Courage and achieve what you have said you wanted.
Let’s examine this:
Did you know the only TRUE FEAR we have at birth is the fear of falling? That means EVERY other fear you have has been LEARNED! Every one. So if you have a fear of public speaking, you learned it somewhere in your life. If you have a fear of being rejected or abandoned, you learned that. That is great news, because if you learned a fear, you can “unlearn” it, so to speak.
I am not saying altering your thought process is an easy task, what I am saying is that it is completely achievable. You simply need to know how to take it step by step until your fear stops stopping you.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. -Eleanor Roosevelt
Learning how to confront your fears is as simple as one, two, three:
STEP ONE:
What are you really afraid of?
Have you ever been on a diet and been doing really well, then all of a sudden BAMM! You gain a pound or two. How did you respond? Did you look over the past week and get honest with yourself and take responsibility for getting off track? Or did you say F*** This and resort to your old habits?
What did you TELL yourself in that moment? Did you tell yourself something positive or negative? Did it sound something like: “I’ll never be thin” or “It never works for me?”
Take a moment and think about it: What did you say to yourself when you hit an obstacle in your weight loss program? This could be the most important answer you discover on your road to success.
-Whether you tell yourself you “can” or you “can’t,” you will ALWAYS be right.
What you said to yourself at that moment is the KEY to your success, and if it was something negative, GOOD FOR YOU! If we don’t learn from our past we can’t move past our fear.
STEP TWO:
How Did It FEEL?
What was the “feeling” you had that accompanied your statement. Were you angry or disgusted with yourself? Were you embarrassed? Did you emotionally shut down so you wouldn’t have to feel anything? Running to food to fill up the empty emotional space around your heart (aka: emotional eating)?
If you can get to the FEELING behind the statement you made you will see where the fear lies. For myself, the feeling was about being unlovable and being abandoned, somehow that every time someone left that it was my fault, and either starving myself or over eating were ways of punishing myself for screwing it up. Somehow I deserved to be punished and food was my way of acting out that feeling. But here is the truth: none of my feelings were REAL, so none of my fears were real. This takes us to number 3.
STEP THREE:
IS IT TRUE??????
What makes feelings and fears real is if we keep giving into them, without thought. But is it true? Was my statement about being unlovable true??? Was my belief that I needed to be punished true? Hell NO! I was the only one making it that way…and I allowed it to be true because I felt it, so therefore it had to be true….
You have heard the statement: The Heart Lies, correct? But what does that mean? It means that when we feel some emotion toward another person we often overlook obvious, physical evidence that would indicate that we should not follow our feelings. So if we all know this, and have done it once or twice (or more) then why is it so hard to believe that we can be mislead by our emotions and feelings around weight loss?
Emotions and feeling APPEAR real in your mind. The brain can’t separate reality from fiction at the level of thought, and feelings are just thoughts. So if this is true, then how can we begin to use this information to our advantage??? If what you have been saying to yourself over and over is not getting you to your goal, and it is not true until you say it is, then what can you tell yourself over and over to make it work to your advantage?
So, when I say I am unlovable then that is going to come true.
What happens when I ask myself is it true? I can begin to list all of the reasons I am lovable (and, by the way, I really am lovable). If I encounter a personality trait that may not be so lovable, then I get to change it. This is all about belief.
“The Only Thing Standing Between You and Your Goal Is the Bulls**t Story You Keep Telling Yourself As To Why You Can’t Achieve It” –Jordan Belford
So when you get clear on the story you keep telling yourself (Step One), then you can identify the feelings you have that keep convincing yourself it is true (Step Two), and then you get to decide if it is true (Step Three).
See, it is as easy as one, two, three.
Now, fill in the story you want to believe about yourself. Write it down, complete with clear goals, read it everyday complete with all of the new, positive feelings that go along with the story and have a better result.
What do you do if you stumble or fall? Repeat Step One, Two, Three and get back on track. Then consider:
What Would You Attempt To Do If You Know You Could Not Fail?
Because if you Never Quit, You Can Never Fail.
Have a Healthy Day!





