“The best gift you have to give your children is your own happiness”. A quote from Abraham.
Then why is it when you are losing weight to upgrade your life that you sacrifice your goal for what you believe to be the happiness of your children or your family? If something must ‘give’ in the family schedule, it is your goal, and you may often feel you are not important. Your mindset is to look after everyone else first, and if there is any energy left, you will investigate losing weight.
If you have read a few of my blogs you will hear me harp on about how it is important to fill your own cup first, so that you have so much more to give others. This is not selfish. Practicing and role modelling self-care and self-love increases your happiness which is then flowed into your family.
But it needs to be a conscious decision to practice self-care and self-love, especially if your current pattern has been to be selfless and self-sacrificing. Don’t be hard on yourself for this, to some degree you are just conforming to what society has created to be the picture of a ‘good mum’.
However, you need to decide if it is serving you or your children as you show up with little energy at the end of the day. Or as you negotiate (in what feels like a ground hog day approach), for your children to eat their dinner, have a bath and go to bed. This Mum may not be showing up as her best self as she throws herself on the couch after shouting at the children to get into bed and then grabs something sweet to try and feel better or reward herself. You are worthy and deserving of love and happiness, every human is.
I have done this work myself and moved through the feelings of guilt and the urge to self-sabotage because of an ingrained belief that my family comes first. I am not saying it is wrong to think this. I am saying that it was not serving me or my family to think this. What I want to share, is that my family are more grateful that they have a Mum who no longer a ‘shouty Mummy’, and because I have goals that I am excited about, I no longer run around getting into all their business! My boys are interested in what I am doing and why I am doing it. I feel like I am role modelling ways I want them to show up in the world.
I want to introduce you to the ‘capacity to have’ concept. Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School introduced it to me. The capacity to have is a belief that you are worthy and deserving of being at your ideal weight. The concept can also be transferred to include the capacity to have money, a job, good health, and love, but we will stick with weight loss.
When you don’t believe you deserve to be at your ideal weight, you will not have the capacity to be in that skin. You will not know how to be comfortable with your accomplishment and you may self-sabotage your efforts and go back to what you think feels familiar and where you ‘should’ be.
So, if you take all the actions, and you experience weight loss, if you don’t work on your mindset around deserving to be in that body, you may not enjoy the result, or at least not for awfully long as those self-sabotaging thoughts come in. Thoughts like ‘Who do you think you are?’ ‘You don’t deserve this body’, ‘Did you really think you could keep this up?’.
These are all sneaky thoughts. They are just thoughts. They are optional, and you have an opportunity here to practice a different way to think about being in a body that weighs less. A body that can become your new normal.
To step fully into the success of weight loss and of being at your ideal weight, develop the belief that you deserve this weight loss. Learn how to be with the accomplishment and not be scared of it. Don’t feel like an imposter in your own body, instead, shed the old skin and develop the capacity to have, and be in a new skin. You really are 100% deserving and worthy of this.
If you want to learn more on how to develop a mindset to lose weight and a whole lot of other weight loss and nutrition ‘must knows’, then join me and Nutritional Therapist and Personal Trainer, Ruth Harries, in a 90-minute workshop to Redefine Your Approach to Weight Loss, this Thursday, November 19th 7pm GMT. **Click here** to find out more and book. Don’t miss this opportunity to get so many great tools on weight loss from experts on weight loss in one place.
Have a brilliant week.
