How much time do you spend preoccupied, planning, and strategizing about being engaged in your self-defeating behaviors or actions? Do you practice these self-defeating behaviors while trying to connect in the present moment, and wonder why you are so unhappy? Do your filters only allow you to look through a past that doesn’t exist any longer? Are your choices and relationships about reinforcing self-destructive behaviors and patterns? Do you constantly re-create old patterns in your relationships with the world, others, and yourself and then wonder why you always “feel like” a failure? (Remember, feelings aren’t facts; they are cues to tell us something important is going on and we need to get into our head, get grounded, and check it out.)
If you were willing to create a moment (just a single moment) where you committed to interrupt the pattern of being driven unhealthy impulses, where you contemplate not engaging in self-defeating behaviors, what would the present be like for you? Would you look at this moment as a new creation? Would you see yourself as someone who cared for and respected you? Would you be willing to look at your body without judgment or intent to bring harm to it? If you were willing to keep your eye on your goal of being healthy, creating calm and peace today, and think your way through the moment, do you think your self-destructive behaviors might lose their appeal?
What you see depends on what you’re looking for. Source Unknown
So with that, I’d like to ask you, are you managing your life? Or is some self-destructive automatic sequence driving it with you in the passenger’s seat screaming about feeling out of control? Now, that is not to say challenging negative behaviors and interrupting destructive patterns is easy or simple….indeed, it will fight back. Habits, especially old automatic ones, die slowly, and have the gusto of dry grasslands during the dry season when fires start.
My challenge to you is this: Today for a moment; own your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Clear your view towards being healthier, and then act as if you are running your life. Unchoose feeding the self-destructive and self-defeating thoughts, in this moment – they aren’t helpful to you. Those urges to choose to be unhealthy will lie to you; like a toddler telling you they aren’t tired, when in fact anyone within 5 miles can see they are indeed of a much-needed nap. They will pull on you, and wait for you to let your guard down.
Sitting through them, using those coping skills to SIT THROUGH the suck, and allowing you to fill time and your attention to focus on what you want to create – health, peace, contentment. Yes, it will be tough, but five minutes of healthy focus and feeling the feeling and not being self-defeating can become 10 minutes, then over time, 30 minutes, then an hour and so on. Train your body and mind to focus on the thing you want – health, peace, contentment. Train so that your deep breath now starts the pathway to calmness and self-containment. The feelings, they’ll pass. If in this moment, you keep your eye on that goal of being healthy, and you are willing to say “NO” to your these unreasonable and impulsive urges, negative thoughts and unhealthy behaviors, and choose instead to make a decision in your own best interest, what do you think this moment could be like for you?
