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Self Care is An Attitude, Not An Activity

Not taking care of yourself? Not putting You at the top of your list like all the women’s magazines advise? Most of these articles advocate some form of trying harder. Make yourself the priority! Give yourself a reward! Get a pedicure! (Why does all self care start with a pedicure? As if the road to peace and happiness runs through your sparkly toenails…) And the ultimate self-care reward… wait for it… Massage!

Don’t get me wrong, these activities are lovely, I enjoy them myself. The problem is we have it backwards. These tactics will never work until we address WHY we’re not finding the space to take care of ourselves. Notice that I said space and not time.

The reason why you aren’t eating, food journaling, exercising, sleeping, meditating, or de-stresssing the way you want is not because you’re too busy, it’s because you have a damn good reason not to.

Any of these sound familiar?
Paying attention to my body’s hunger signals is hard.
Keeping a food journal is a hassle.
I don’t have time to plan meals.
It’ll never work.
I’m just going to fail again. (aka The Eyeore Defense)
I get more praise and attention for taking care of others than for taking care of me.
If I stop doing for others, I’ll feel scary emotions.

To move into self care mode, find the sucky reasons (SR’s) that are holding you back and use all those smarts you have to question them.

Here are some ways you could question the above SR’s:

What takes more time out of your life? Taking care of yourself, or not? Give yourself detailed examples of how not taking care of yourself takes more time and how taking care of yourself takes less. They’re there, I promise.

Rather than giving it a go, they Eyeore defense allows you to fail now and be done with it. That is indeed sucky.

What’s the cost of that praise and attention you’re working so hard to get? What happens when you work so hard and you don’t get it? In the esteemed words of the modern sage/nutball Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for ya?”

What would happen if you didn’t jump in and do for others? If it’s not enough that doing this would be an awesome thing for you–how might that be an awesome thing to do for them?

Can you die of feeling an emotion? Can you die (inside) from not feeling an emotion?

Self care is an attitude, not an activity.
I can be completely hair-on-fire busy and feel peaceful, content and caring toward myself. I can be getting one of those aforementioned pedicures and be a hot mess of stress.

What you’re doing and your level of activity in life matter less than how you’re THINKING about it and yourself. When you dissolve the beliefs that stand between you and caring for yourself, you’ll find a way to get enough sleep, fuel your body properly, exercise and take your Flintstone vitamins regardless of what’s going on. You’ll be calmer and more centered even in the storm of activity that is your life.

You’re never going to “put your oxygen mask on first” if you believe you’re getting a bigger emotional payoff for putting everyone else’s mask on first and leaving yourself lying passed out in your airplane seat. It will feel really hard to perform the self-loving acts that will take you to your natural weight until you disprove the beliefs getting in the way.

Once you dissolve all those sucky reasons for not putting yourself at the center of your life, then by all means, go get yourself a massage.

Terminally Unique

I was talking with a client the other day and I noticed that she kept talking about how complicated she was, how entrenched her thinking was and how hard it was for her to change. A lightbulb went off for me.

They had a saying for this in 12-step programs, they call it being “terminally unique”. Each person tends to think their own story is unique. They tell themselves (and us!) that their case is special, they are REALLY messed up, that their issues are the WORST. Which is really their way of convincing themselves they can’t change. The truth is, we all have stuff–big stuff and small stuff–our stories are nothing special. Like Byron Katie says, there are no new painful stories. What’s great about this is that once you are able to let go of being terminally unique, you can lose weight/stop drinking/change your life just like thousands of other people who have before you.

How would you eat, tune into your body and take care of yourself if you let go of being terminally unique?

Cultivate Pride

I have never had one client be motivated to stop overeating by the thought of looking cute in her skinny jeans. Not one. Me either for that matter.

This phrase is the weight-loss shorthand for our culture, it captures a desirable outcome we can all get behind—a cute booty. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to look cute in your jeans (my point would be to buy cute jeans and rock them out now, but that’s another blog post…), I just don’t think that thought motivates you.

Why?

Because it’s not really what you want.

What you are looking for is the emotion behind looking cute in your jeans—the emotion that comes from loving, honoring, respecting and nurturing yourself enough to be willing to feel your feelings and stop putting more food in your body than it wants.

I’m talking about pride.

Pride has gotten a bad rap. When most people talk derisively about pride, they are talking about false pride—propping up of insecurities with arrogance and conceit; seeking external validation with a “look at me” attitude. I am talking about true pride—appreciation of yourself and your accomplishments from a place of genuine self respect, dignity and confidence.

This is great news because you don’t have to wait until those skinny jeans fit, you can feel proud of yourself right now. And when you tap into this very strong emotion of pride in yourself, it becomes a piece of cake (ha! pun intended) to stop eating when you’re satisfied.

Here’s how to cultivate pride:

1. Create strong emotion.
Here’s where I think the skinny jeans battle-cry falls down. There’s not enough emotion associated with it. You slip on those jeans and you feel… really good, maybe great. And then, you’re wearing pants. Not exactly a Hallmark moment.

Now, think about a day where you take great care of yourself. A day where you eat wonderful foods that fuel your body just until you’re satisfied and no more. A day where you exercise and maybe even go a little longer or faster than you did the day before. A day where you are willing to feel your feelings rather than eat them. Or, a day where you simply do one of those things.

Now, how do you feel? I hope you say proud. What does pride feel like? Get into it, make it vivid, feel free to lay it on thick—you deserve it.

Remember that feeling.

2. Pride now, no waiting.
Waiting for your jeans to fit (or until you get to your natural weight) is too long to wait for the emotional payoff of loving yourself. Plus, it’s totally unneccesary. That feeling I asked you to remember above? Give it to yourself every time you do something pride-worthy. Let me tell you, when I do my Kinesis workouts, I give myself a HUGE dose of pride feelings. I lay it on thick. I make it a double. I frickin’ supersize it. I went from a woman who had an ambivalent and rocky relationship with exercise to a woman who not only loves it, but regularly challenges herself to new levels of fitness. I’m proud of that.

Since I’m not a fan of cooking, I am proud of myself every time I make a great fuel food meal from my “Eating for Life” cookbook. (Or a not-so-great meal due to operator error!) And, I’m just a proud when I grab a great fuel food option from the grocery store. I am still proud every time I stop eating at +2 on the Hunger Scale. Have you caught on yet? I am extremely proud of myself on a daily basis.

3. Fast Forward
Whenever you have a decision point between prideful action and self-destructive action, fast-forward in your mind. Conjure up all your prideful feelings and think about how awesome you will feel about yourself right after you choose self-esteem over self-destruction. Feel those feelings deeply—and choose.

Let your strong emotions of pride propel you through to the outcome you want. The Biggest Loser theme song captures this concept perfectly, “What have you done today to make you feel proud?”

So? What have you done today to make yourself feel proud? Please comment and share. It doesn’t have to be just eating or exercise, all kinds of pride cultivation welcome!

Writer’s Block

I’ve had an action-packed (and very fun) summer and just haven’t felt like writing. There’s been several things I’ve wanted to write about, but the desire just does not seem to be fully back in place. That’s ok, it’ll come.

What I have been finding are a ton of great blog posts that I’ve been sending to my clients. So I figured I’d share them with you too since I’ve got nothin’ right now.

Jeannette Maw, the fabulous Good Vibe Coach, recently posted an interactive discussion about how to move toward what you want by acting as if you already have it. Be sure to read the comments!

Brooke Castillo, one of my mentors, recently posted an oldie but goodie about the lies we tell ourselves about our relationship with food. (Hint: You don’t  have a “relationship” with food, you have relationships with people.)

Master Coach and my very good friend Susan Hyatt chimes in with this nugget about savoring the moment. Juicy.

Another Master Coach and very good friend Michele Woodward wrote this post about when other people’s gifts (think metaphor here) become junk.

You’ll hear more from me next week. In the meantime, enjoy these posts, I did.

Resistance is Futile

Remember this line from Star Trek, the Next Generation? No? Here’s a refresher: there was this alien race called The Borg and they grew powerful by “assimilating” unwilling others into their Borg collective. Their classic line was, “Resistance is futile.” Turns out those Borg dudes were onto something.

I was reading this diet book last night (which shall remain nameless) where the author said “resisting” so many times, it started to make me feel a little jumpy. Resist overeating, resist cravings, resist your thinking. Just keep on resisting and those pounds will fall right off. Ugh.

My experience with resistance is more along the lines of “what we resist, persists.” Meaning the more you resist, the more you find yourself nose-first in nachos.

Try this little experiment:

Think about the color green.

Now DON’T think about it. Don’t! Don’t do it, stop it, no green.

Seriously I mean it, no green!

Have you just seen more green things than you have in a year?
That’s how resistance works.

Telling yourself to not do or think something is the same as telling your mind to put your full attention on it. So when you decide to resist that tempting Godiva bar (Or as I call it, Go-Diva), you have now created a traction beam to it. Before you know it, you’ve been assimilated into the chocolate-covered Borg.

So if resistance is futile, what now?

Flip from resistance mode to curious mode and dive right into it.

When you find yourself resisting something, it’s the fighting of it that makes it that much stronger. Instead of running away from the object of your resistance, walk right up to it and find out what the heck it’s all about. Be curious about why you’re trying to avoid the food/feeling/person/activity.

In the case of food, is it something you’ve told yourself you shouldn’t have? What if you truly allowed yourself to have it? Or, you might notice you want it because you think it will make you feel better. Would it? Once you’re in curious mode rather than resistance mode, you can actively choose what you want to do.

If it’s a feeling you’re avoiding. Spelunk right into it and see what’s there. Is the feeling as intense as you thought? Can you handle feeling it? How does it feel in your body, what does it make you want to do? Oh, the feeling’s gone already? Funny how that works…

When you stop resisting, you’ll find the intensity of the feeling or craving lessens or even goes away entirely. Resistance is like fuel for your negative emotions, it just makes them burn hotter. Once you remove the fuel, the emotion becomes right sized. You also feel the emotion all the way through so you can be done with it. Resistance just drags it out.

Whether it’s anger, boredom, Ho-Hos or the Borg, resistance is futile.