Ep #104: Demotivating Compelling Reasons

Hi! I am feeling so great right now. I just got off a call with a former client who I just love so much and who is doing amazing. It just lights me up so much to see people who have lasting success and who continue to improve their lives once binge eating is removed from it. This is why I do what I do. Not only do I get to make my own life better and better because of all the life coaching tools I’ve acquired but I get to pass them on to other people and help create more success and happiness in the world. It’s the best!

You’re actually going to hear her story on the podcast. So stay tuned. It’s coming.

But today, I’m going to talk with you about compelling reasons, specifically the demotivating ones because they are getting in your way.

I first talked to you about compelling reasons way back in episode #5 about why you want to binge eat and also in #25 about motivating yourself. It’s an important piece in the stop binge eating puzzle and it’s important to have a compelling reason to achieve any challenging goal you have for yourself.

This reason, or reasons, are your motivation. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the reason why you’re going to put in effort and energy to do something that’s out of your comfort zone and that isn’t going to be easy.

When your brain starts spewing all these “go binge” thoughts and the reasons why you should binge seem very enticing, you have to have a very enticing reason to counter it all. When you are deciding between putting in time and effort to stop binge eating and not, your reason to do it has to be a really, really good one.

But, the problem I see a lot of people run into is that they think they have good compelling reasons to stop binge eating, to reach their goal, but they don’t.

It may seem like their reason or reasons are inspiring and motivating but, they’re actually stopping them from taking action.

Not all reasons are created equally. Just because you have a reason, doesn’t mean it’s going to motivate you.

I’m going to list a bunch of reasons that I’ve heard from clients of mine and I want you to listen to them. If you hear some that resonate with you, think about how you feel when you think of them:

I’m wasting my time and my life

I’m sick of this

I’m making myself feel terrible

I’m gaining weight

I feel sluggish

I feel bad about myself

I feel self-conscious, unworthy, inadequate

My confidence and self-esteem are way too low

I isolate

I have no energy

My life is hard

I’m not doing things I want to be doing

How do those feel?

Even after just saying them out loud to you, I feel a bit more down than I did before. It really doesn’t feel good to say all those things.

Now, those are for sure reasons why a person would want to stop binge eating. I can say for myself that I definitely had most of those thoughts. I hear them from a lot of you all too.

But the problem here is that these reasons might bring you down, not lift you up.

They might make you feel bad about yourself and feel bad about what you’ve been doing.

They might make you feel frustrated, angry, sad, ashamed, embarrassed.

Then when you feel those feelings, when you feel bad about yourself and feel bad about what you’ve been doing, you are not in a space where you’re going to get up and get to work on yourself.

I talked about this last week too, on episode #103 about accepting where you are ,where people get confused about where their motivation is coming from.

I’m telling you, it’s not coming from your negative feelings about yourself. They may lead you into deciding to make a change, but it’s not the fuel that lights the fire within you.

I have a client who thought her disappointment about her job was what drove her to get a new one. She saw more than one example in her life where disappointment led to change.

But when we looked further into it, she was disappointed for at least a year before she left her job. Now, if disappointment was the driving factor, she wouldn’t have stayed for as long as she did. She would have felt disappointed and quit. But that’s not what happened.

It was when she switched her focus from what’s disappointing her to how much better it could be to move on to something else that she felt that spark and made changes.

It was her belief in a better life that did it and that belief caused her to feel optimistic about changing and excited about changing. It’s the optimism and excitement that really fueled the change. That’s what motivated her.

Really think about it. If you’re looking to feel motivated to workout or to get work done, does it help you to think about how terrible you feel right now? Does it help you to think about how disappointed you are that you didn’t get the work done sooner? Doubtful.

You’re not going to take effortful actions when you’re feeling down. You won’t until you change your thoughts about what you want to get done. You’ll do it when you see the end result in your mind, and it’s a dang good result, and it’s one that you oh so very much want to get to.

When you feel excited to get something, when you think about something and you feel lifted, focused, and you’re looking forward to it, that’s going to drive you to it.

Take some time to really think about this. Why do you want to stop binge eating? Find an answer that feels exciting and compelling, that really speaks to you and makes you feel, in your bones, that you must have it.

Find reasons that excite you.

Think about what’s going to be awesome in the future. Think about things you really want, things you want to gain.

Instead of thinking about why your current situation sucks, think about how amazing it will be to not binge.

Pump yourself up instead of deflating yourself.

Think about how confident you’ll be, how much higher your self-esteem will be, how much more time you’ll have for truly fulfilling and fun things, how much better you’ll feel.

Those are things you’ll want to move towards. Think about them, and then go get them!

Have a great week doing it. Bye bye!