Ep #121: What You Want and Don’t Want

Hi everyone! For those of you who live in the U.S., this episode is being released a couple days before Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving! So I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about what you want and what you don’t want.

I decided to do this topic this week as I was thinking about how many of us on Thanksgiving share what we’re thankful for and grateful for.

There’s been just a few Thanksgivings that I’ve been at a table where we go around and say what we’re thankful for. It was never a tradition in my family but over the years I’ve had Thanksgivings with different groups of people and sometimes we do it. Whenever it happens, I always find it interesting to hear what people have to say, and it’s so heartwarming. It also feels good to think about what I’m thankful and grateful for and share it out loud.

Thinking about what’s good and what we’re happy with feels good. It lights us up, warms our hearts, and puts us in a positive place.

Yet instead of doing that, too often we get down on ourselves for not having what we want and having what we don’t want.

Do you think you spend more time thinking about how you don’t want to binge or about what you want instead of bingeing?

A lot of the time when I talk to people about what they want, they jump into what they don’t want.

They don’t want to binge, they don’t want to feel crappy, they don’t want to feel bad about themselves, they don’t want to isolate themselves.

They look at their life as it is right now and tell me all the things they don’t like about it.

Now, this can be a good starting point. I think it’s important to know what you want to change before you change it. You have to know what you’re changing, right?

But like I said, it’s a starting point. It’s not where you want to stay.

When you stay there and spend your time thinking about all the things you have that you don’t want you feel bad.

It doesn’t feel good to think about what’s not working in your life.

Think about if it was your job that you have that you don’t want. What would it be like if you spent your days thinking about how much you hate it? Those would be some miserable days.

I see so many of you do this with your eating and especially with your bodies. You spend chunks of your day thinking about how fat, gross, disgusting, or simply unattractive your body is.

And then you feel awful and eat to feel better or numb yourself but then feel worse because in your mind you’re making your body worse.

I get it, you’re not 100% happy with where your body is but spending your day thinking about how much you dislike it isn’t helping you to change it.

When you focus on what you have that you don’t want, it doesn’t feel good, plain and simple.

What feels so much better is coming up with a plan to get what you do want.

But here’s where people get stuck. They don’t know what they want. They know they don’t want to binge.

Now, again, this is a good starting point. You don’t want to binge. Good to know. But what DO you want?

What is it you’re working toward? If you’re not bingeing, what are you doing? How does your life look?

Every now and then I talk to someone who is completely lost when I ask this question. They never allow themselves to dream of what that life without bingeing looks like so they have no idea.

If that’s you, it’s time to start dreaming. It’s time to start visualizing that life that you’re going to create for yourself.

Know what you’re wanting, and get as specific as possible. Think about the little things, and the big things. Think about how you want to be as a person, what you want to do, what you want to have in your life. All the things!

It feels so good to think about these things but only, if you believe you can get them.

That’s what stops a lot of people from dreaming. They don’t see the point because they don’t believe they can achieve their dreams.

But why? Why can’t you? The only thing stopping you is you. That lack of belief in yourself is what’s stopping you.

If you had all these dreams and aspirations for all these amazing things and you believe you could get them and live them, you wouldn’t stop going for them.

You would not stop putting in the effort to get them if you believed all that amazingness was available to you.

It’s when you don’t believe that it doesn’t feel so good to think about them. You get down on yourself because you think you can’t have them. You see it, you see what you want, but then you tell yourself that YOU can’t. Maybe other people can, but not you.

That’s total BS. If it’s a realistic dream, there is no reason why you can’t. And when I say realistic I mean don’t tell me things like you have a dream to have a super power like flying or being invisible to use extreme examples. But if you want to own a house, be a business owner, make $200K a year, live somewhere new, stop binge eating, feel confident in your skin, maintain your weight, any of these things, they are 100% possible for you. There’s no reason why not. Unless there’s some sort of extenuating circumstance, there’s not.

Believe you can have what you want. It’s your belief that will fuel you toward it and your disbelief that will block you.

So, let’s focus on what we want and believe we can get it.

Sure it may take a lot of work and effort, but it’s possible and if you want it bad enough, you’ll put in that work and effort.

But let’s tie this back to what I talked about in the beginning of this episode, Thanksgiving and being thankful.

We think about what we have that we don’t want and what we don’t have that we do want but, what about what we have that we do want?

There’s so much that you have in your life that is exactly what you want. There’s things you’ve always had, things you have that come easily to you, and things you have that you worked hard for.

How good does it feel to think about those things?

Like for me, some things I have that I want are my dream career, an amazing boyfriend, the ability to walk, a good memory, confidence, love for myself, a well-behaved dog, which I have to thank my boyfriend for training as a puppy, he did a great job, clothes to wear, a black Nissan Sentra, fun friends, a new super comfy couch that we just got delivered and I’m loving it so much, heat, hot water, air conditioning, television, I have the most amazing people in my coaching groups that I get to help and work with on their eating and their lives. I could go on and on. Even just saying all that felt so good.

It feels good to appreciate what you have that you want in your life.

So here’s my homework for you.

Take a lined piece of paper and on each line, you’re going to write something you want and you’re going to alternate between things you want that you don’t have and things you want that you do have.

Don’t allow yourself to say “I don’t know” and then stop. Search your mind. Again, little things, huge things, what do you want? And no twisting it to say you want to not have things, figure out what that means in having. If you don’t have that thing, what do you have? If you don’t have binge eating in your life, what do you have?

And if you catch yourself getting down about the things you want but don’t have, you have some work to do on your belief. Question why you think you can’t have it and find those limiting beliefs you’re believing. And spoiler alert, they’re not true.

Appreciate what you have that you want, be excited about what you want that you don’t have, and only use what you have that you don’t want as a starting point before you move into what you’re going to do to get what you do want.

Have a wonderful week, I’ll talk to you next time, and enjoy your holiday in the U.S.

Bye bye.