Ep #129: Things That Are Out of Your Control

Hi! Let’s talk about control and the things that are out of your control.

A while back, in episode #78, I talked about when other people decide what you eat. Those are the moments when your food options are out of your control because you’re going to someone’s house for dinner, other people are choosing the restaurant, you’re at an event, those kinds of things.

In this episode, I’m going to be focusing on circumstances of your life that are out of your control because a lot of you are eating when these things happen.

Whether we like it or not, things are going to happen in our lives that are out of our control.

Other people do things, people say things, and people make decisions and sometimes what those people are doing, saying and deciding affect us.

It would be so nice if we could all just decide how we want the world and the people to be and it was that way.

We all think we know how people should be and how the world should be and if everyone agreed with us then we’d all live in harmony living our best lives.

But, that’s not how life and the world work.

We can’t make other people say, do, and decide what we want. We’re not puppet masters.

We can’t change all the circumstances of our lives. Yes, we can change some but some we can’t.

So when you’re in a position where life isn’t going as you planned or people aren’t behaving as you’d like, how do you handle it?

You might just try to escape it. You eat to drown it out, you eat to numb away the feelings you’re feeling as you go through it, you eat to distract from it and take a break from it.

That of course is just going to add one more undesirable circumstance into your life.

Doesn’t seem to be a useful way of dealing with all those things that are out of your control.

You’re experiencing circumstances that you aren’t happy with, that you have no control of, you’re not feeling so great about them, you’re feeling negatively, so you eat to control your feelings.

You think you can control your feelings by eating food. You think you’re going to make the feelings go away by eating the food.

But here’s the thing. When you stop eating, those circumstances are still there. Your feelings will return because you didn’t actually handle them or do anything to really change them. You just escaped them for a little bit.

It’s like drinking to forget your problems. You may forget about them as you’re drinking but when the drinking stops, your problems will return.

Eating doesn’t control your feelings. Eating doesn’t make feelings go away.

Eating doesn’t change what other people say, do, or decide.

All eating can do is fuel your body, give you temporary pleasure, and if you’re binge eating, it adds more one more thing into your life that you may think you can’t control.

But let me tell you this. You 100% can control your binge eating. That’s what this whole entire podcast is showing you. You probably just don’t have all the tools and skills to do it yet.

However, an important thought to think that will help you to do it though is that it won’t change what you can’t control.

You have to see that binge eating is not a problem solver.

The world and the people aren’t going change because you ate a bag of chips and a pint of ice cream.

So what can you do? How can you live in this world where so much is out of your control and not feel so awful about it? How can you handle it without eating?

Well, you may not be able to control the other people but you can control yourself.

You have so much more self-control than you think you do.

You can say no, you can respond differently, you can think differently, you can tell different stories, and you can feel differently if you do all these things.

Eating isn’t going to change how you feel, changing how you’re thinking is what will change how you feel because it’s your thoughts cause your feelings.

Change how you’re thinking and then you get to show up in the midst of all you can’t control as the best version of yourself that you can be given those circumstances.

Now, changing your thoughts, your stories, your responses to things that aren’t ideal in your life isn’t easy to do. This is why coaching is so valuable because we can’t always see another way of looking at things in our life.

We’re like, “That person sucks, they’re ruining my life, they’re so stupid,” and we just can’t see any other way to describe them and how they are. Sometimes it takes another person’s perspective to help you see another way.

There is another way. The only thing that’s true, that’s factual, is that they’re a person. That’s it. Your description isn’t factual. It’s changeable.

How you’re choosing to think about them is your choice, it’s your opinion. They would probably disagree with you, their partner or spouse would probably disagree with you, their mother may, and many other people may too.

You get to describe them any way that you want to and by choosing that description, you’re making yourself feel angry, resentful, and annoyed.

They’re not making you feel those feelings, you are because of how you’re choosing to think about them.

And also, no one else can ruin your life. People can do things that affect your circumstances but you always get to decide how you handle your new circumstances that they’ve created for you.

What if that person isn’t ruining your life, they actually set you up for a new, amazing opportunity for something?

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on this podcast before but when I was working as a fitness instructor I was teaching at 3 studios. In the course of two days, I was laid off from one and fired from another. The one I was left at was the one where I made the least amount of money.

I could have thought those two studio owners ruined my life, but I didn’t. Sure, I was happy working there and I put a lot of effort into my training to work there and now I had to find a new job and start over but, I didn’t see that as a problem.

Well, hold on, I mean, yes, I did do a lot of crying, don’t get me wrong. I was disappointed and I was a little scared about the future, but I didn’t blame my bosses for their decisions.

I understood why they did what they did. The one who laid me off did so because she needed to close the studio and believe me, she did not want to do that.

The one who fired me, I’m not even going to go into that story but I’m not even mad at him either. He did what he thought was best for his studio.

I have understanding of why they made the choices they made.

When I was put in that position of being basically unemployed, I didn’t blame them. I took responsibility for what I was going to do next and how I was going to handle the circumstances I was put in.

And what I did ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.

It was when I decided to go to The Life Coach School and get my training and certification to be a life and weight coach and embarked on my career that I have today that I love so much.

I had wanted to do that training for almost a year and I would have continued putting it off had I not lost those jobs.

When other people made decisions that affected me, and I didn’t like the circumstance I was then in because of them, although yes I did probably complain and I know I cried, I also took responsibility for my life, my decisions, and how I responded to what had happened.

Life is going to throw you curve balls. Things are going to happen that you didn’t plan for. People are going to do unexpected things. People are going to do things you don’t agree with.

What are you going to do then?

You can escape by eating food or you can respond in a way that will be useful to you.

This happens all the time in my life, those curve balls and all that. People in my life don’t always act the way I want them to.

I could escape with food or drinking or whatever, I could cut people out, I could try to control them, and of course fail, or I can do my thought work to change how I think about it all.

Now, this is not easy work to do. I still have to do conscious work on my thinking sometimes. Every other coach I know does too.

We all have imperfect brains that come up with thoughts that aren’t useful.

But doing that work to change how you’re thinking and responding will change how you feel, how you behave, and the results you see in your life.

Changing circumstances is not necessary when you can change your mind.

You can accept people as being how they are. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have conversations and speak your mind and share what you believe and have discussions and all that. You don’t have to just give up on trying to change the world. I definitely don’t. I mean, I’m here on this podcast trying to help you change you so the world can have less people who binge eat.

But I’m not going to get frustrated at or angry with people who don’t stop binge eating. I can’t control you. I can only share my expertise, wisdom, tools, and ideas. You do with that what you will.

But again, you can accept people for how they are, and still love them. You can learn from people who think and do differently than you and expand your own mind, beliefs, and thoughts about things. You can gain understanding of where people are coming from even if you don’t agree with them. You can let other people be wrong or have different opinions and not be upset about it, just let it be how it is. You have your opinion, they have their’s, and just know that most of the time in situations like that there is some truth to both sides.

I’m not going to get political but when you look at political arguments, a lot of the time both people have valid points if you can see if from their point of view.

But anyway, when things are out of your control, you still have control of yourself.

You get to decide if you eat or not, you get to decide how you choose to think about things. Even if your brain automatically goes to the negative, you have the option of staying there or doing the work to change it into something more neutral, or positive.

Take control of your life and control of what you can control. Take responsibility for your life and think in useful ways that are going to create feelings that will drive you into actions you want to be taking.

You are not a victim of your circumstances. No matter what they are, your actions and feelings in the midst of them are on you.

You create the results of your life and your experience of your life.

Controlling everything around you isn’t necessary. Focus on you and work on you.

Have a wonderful week everyone. Bye bye.