Do you struggle to acheive your goals? As someone who has spent most of their life in denial about weight gain or in an endless soul-destroying battle to lose weight, I have thought long and hard about what is different this time and why I am now able to maintain a very healthy weight and am fitter and most importantly happier than I have ever been.
I have realised a very simple fact that has actually been very hard to accept. But now I know it to be 100% true.
What was different this time was:
“I knew what I wanted and I stopped being afraid of getting it“
Now I believed I had always wanted to lose weight and I would tell anyone who would listen that it was what I wanted more than anything. In reality, I had deep seated reasons why I was frightened of doing so. It was very easy to blame my weight for bad relationships, loneliness, lack of friends, being passed over for promotion at work, family issues etc. etc. If I lost my weight then I was frightened that those things might still happen and if they did then what could I blame? The real issue holding me back was that I believed I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to be loved, good enough at work, good enough to have friends. I found it easier to blame my fat than I did to face up to my biggest fear.
This wasn’t a conscious fear but it was part of the complex set of stories I told myself which meant I thought it was ok to reward myself with chocolate or a takeaway when in reality that was taking me further away from my goal. Logically that makes no sense why we would see that as a reward instead of a punishment but so many of us do it in many areas of our lives.
Now this is a challenging realisation and one that took me a long time and the help of some expert coaching and self-analysis to recognise. I wish I had worked this out before or in the early stages of my weight loss journey as it would have made it far easier.
What I now really understand is that it was the actual fear of not being good enough that meant I held back from job opportunities, I held back from social occasions and because I didn’t love myself, I was hard to love. Once I started to be proud of myself and accept me for who I am then things started to change. I had already lost my weight so it was not my weight that changed my social life – it was my thoughts. It wasn’t my weight that held me back from being brave at work – it was my thoughts.
If you have a goal that you know you really want and yet you are consistently not doing what you need to, then there will be a reason. Check you have the right goal first and if you haven’t already completed the goal template included in last month’s newsletter then give it a try. If your goal is right but you still aren’t moving towards it then have a look at your fears and beliefs. If you are sabotaging yourself then you are most likely protecting yourself from something you are afraid of. Once you work out what that is you can devise a strategy to counter it. If you still can’t work it out then I can help you – just contact me here.
This does not only apply to weight loss goals. This equally applies to career goals, financial goals, health and fitness goals and other personal goals. In the next blog I will be looking at fear of failure and how to start overcoming it.
Go and get whatever you really want – you deserve it!