Let’s start with mistakes. If you have a human brain, then you are highly likely to make mistakes. I have a friend who once told me that ‘children are professional mistake makers’. I love this thought as it immediately makes me feel compassion and acceptance for my children when they make a mistake. And instead of getting cross and frustrated, I can offer them advice that I am offering you, which is to use mistakes as an opportunity to grow and learn. We can do this for ourselves too.
If you have been following my blogs for a while you will be privy to the fact that our brains are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain. That means we have been making mistakes right back when we were evolving humans! Only back in those days, pleasure was in more limited supply. Think along the lines of eating too many berries as opposed to woofing down a whole bag of M&M’s that we have easy access to today.
When you experience uncomfortable emotions like stress, overwhelm, worry, or confusion, the brain sees these as painful and will be strongly motivated to seek pleasure to make us feel better. Enter stage left the chocolate, cookies, or big glass of wine in the evening, right? There is nothing more certain with having a human brain than making mistakes.
But you use these mistakes to make it mean something about you.
- I don’t have any will power
- I will never be able to lose weight
- This is too hard
These are little digs at yourself which said often enough you start to believe them. Your brain will consistently find evidence to make thoughts like these true. And not only that, but you will also probably feel bad about feeling bad and reach for that chocolate bar in the cupboard that will make it allll better.
So how about trying a different way. One where you don’t beat yourself up, practice a new mindset and see mistakes as a way to learn and grow.
- Get conscious of when you are making a mistake and eating or drinking you had not planned on.
- Learn from your mistake. Is there a pattern? Is it a familiar situation or a familiar feeling that you try and escape from and turn to a quick fix to feel better?
- What could you do next time instead of reaching for the chocolate or feel-good food?
- Go for a quick walk.
- Repeat a positive mantra to yourself like ‘I am OK’, or ‘I have a human brain’.
- Allow the feeling to be in your body and not try to escape it. Believe me, this is possible, and you won’t pass out!
- Do a brain dump and write down all the thoughts that are causing the uncomfortable emotion. You will be surprised how useful this can be.
- Be honest with yourself are you being too stringent with what you are choosing to eat. Is it because you are in a hurry to be in your ideal body now? Perhaps it would be more manageable for you to make smaller changes each week. It may mean that it takes a little longer to get to your goal, but the cost of not doing this may mean you give up on your goal completely. You get to decide.
- But the biggest thing I would recommend is not to beat yourself up. This leads to feelings of hopelessness or apathy which do not drive great actions in weight loss. Remind yourself you have a human brain and then take the next action toward your weight loss goal.
I work with my clients on the causes of overeating and over drinking and much of the work we do together is building the relationship they have with themselves, reprogramming belief systems, and applying tools to keep taking action to be the best version of themselves. It is an enlightening journey where you recognise that making mistakes is all part of the process.
If you are ready to commit to losing weight and are ready to apply the tools and knowledge to your life, then contact me to schedule a free no-obligation min call to find out if we are a good fit.
Have a beautiful day.
