Are you tired of being uncomfortable?
“But I like my iced tea sweet!’ said the woman with type II diabetes, who has been in the hospital countless times with low blood sugar scares. She says this after attending a talk focused on the affects of sugar on the body.
Why do we hold on to things, thoughts, food and activities that don’t serve us?
- Convenience
- Fear of change
- Resistance to the unknown
- Addiction
- Attachment
- Habit
- Lack of awareness
- Stubbornness
- Old soundtracks in our mind
I recently heard of a chef who has eczema so badly it is affecting his eyesight…so he jacked up on pills and topical potions. He refuses to give up gluten – the diagnosed cause of his discomfort. Would you risk your eyesight to still eat dough?
Do we just get so comfortable being uncomfortable that we ignore all the suffering we are experiencing?
For the mom who stays up till 2am worrying and waiting for her kids – sleepless nights fog her brain, disrupt her metabolism and her dependence on coffee is messing with her gut – not to mention the additional fights with her husband…What would happen if you shifted your approach to your worry?
For the man who is alone and dateless and finds a pint of ice cream to comfort him…What would happen if you dared to seek solid connections in a new place?
I believe for so many of us, we don’t even realize we are suffering. It sneaks up over time – just a pound or two a year and 10 years later, you’re carrying 20 extra that is affecting your confidence, sleep, joints, job performance and heightening social anxiety.
The ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ ends up being five years later and you’re still not happy and not alive.
Like painting a house, change happens one stroke at a time. The cumulative effect of consistency makes great change. Truth is, it might look messy and be inconvenient for a while. Yet when we remember that the fading and the chipping didn’t happen overnight – neither will getting the whole house painted in a day. For the woman who likes her tea sweet: she can get used to hospital visits OR one day at a time, make an adjustment to her taste buds.
When making change is hard, here are a few ideas:
- Engaging professional support can make the job feel less overwhelming.
- Looking at your future self is a super empowering tool for getting unstuck and making shift happen. Try it out, where will you be in one year, five years, ten years if you make no changes today?
- A baseline assessment helps too. Taking stock and tapping into how you are feeling can be a much better motivator VS relying on a scale to tell you how you are going to show up today.
- Small daily wins. Being consistent with one thing at a time, then adding another doable thing, is a beautiful recipe for sustained progress.
