Ep #194: Choosing Your True Want

Hi! Let’s talk about wanting two things and making decisions.

Sometimes, there are two things you want but, unfortunately you can’t have them both.

In an ideal world, you would choose both but in this real world, you can’t.

Like when you’re feeling an urge to binge and you want to never binge eat again but also want to eat all the food.

When you’re in that position, it can be really confusing.

What do you actually want?

Your brain is saying you want to eat the food, maybe you’ve already started eating and it’s telling you that you to eat more.

But then there’s this other voice saying it’s not what you want. You want to not binge. You want to not start eating. You want to stop eating.

When you have these competing desires going on in your brain, you want to be able to say no to eating and deep down you know that’s your true want but, you think that not giving in will feel too bad.

When you have a desire that is left unanswered, when you’re craving, urging, longing, or yearning for something and you’re not getting it, it’s uncomfortable. In that moment when you’re feeling the urge, your most prominent want that you’re seeing is the food.

That’s the desire you get focused on.

So it becomes yes or no for that desire and you may say yes because you believe it will be more comfortable and easier to say yes.

But you’re not saying yes because it’s your true want, your true desire, it’s because you’re choosing comfortable and easy.

This is why it’s so important to be willing to go through discomfort and do the harder things. That’s what will make it easier for you to say no to eating when you truly want to say no.

To make the decision to choose your true want, you’ll sometimes have to say yes to discomfort and yes to the harder option.

You’ll also have to mentally amplify that voice that is stating your true want.

That voice is there. It’s speaking. It’s telling you what you truly want.

Are you hearing it? Are you agreeing with it? Are you choosing to focus on that want and telling it to yourself, deliberately, over and over?

Or when you hear it, do you tell yourself that’s it’s too hard or too uncomfortable? Do you push that want away? Do you ignore it?

If you want to choose your true want, the thing you really want, not the thing you think you want in that moment, the false want, you have to put in effort to think about it. To tell yourself it.

Now, it’s not as simple as just saying, “I want to not eat more food,” and then you’re good.

Yes you make that decision but there’s going to be more to the story.

Your brain is going to tell you it’s not what you want and what you really want is to eat the food.

It might tell you that if you say no, you’re denying yourself of something you want.

But let’s be clear about something here. If you’re desiring something and you say no, then sure, you’re denying yourself of something you want.

But, if you say yes to eating, are you also denying yourself of something you want?

If you say yes to eating more food because you don’t want to deny your desire for more food, and you eat the food, will there be something else that you’re then denying yourself of by saying yes to eating?

If there is, it’s important to consider which of those things you’re denying yourself of is more important to you.

Would you rather deny yourself of more food or deny yourself of what you’d get if you stopped eating right now? Or didn’t start eating?

I bet most of the time when it comes to binge eating and eating past fullness you’d rather say no to more food than no to what you’d get if you didn’t eat the food.

So take a moment to consider all the way through what you’re really denying yourself of and what you really want.

You always have the option of taking a pause. Always. Instead of just reacting to your desire and getting what you think you want, take a moment and think about it. Even if you just set a timer for one minute, or 5 minutes, to think this decision through, the pros and cons of each option, you’re giving yourself a better chance of landing on choosing your true want.

But when you’re taking that pause, it’s so important that you’re not pushing your wants away and resisting them.

This is a moment for you to get curious, to have a discussion with yourself, not an argument and not to pressure yourself.

Trying to push away your desire and resisting it is just going to intensify it.

So don’t push, don’t resist. Acknowledge this desire to eat, or to eat more, and look at why you want to do it and why you don’t. You can consider your future self, who you will soon be in 30 minutes, in one hour, in several hours.

How you respond to your desire to eat will make it either harder or easier to follow through on choosing your true want, if eating is not your true want of course.

Saying no to your desire doesn’t have to be super uncomfortable and it won’t be if you’re clear about what you really do and don’t want, meaning what your true self wants and doesn’t want both in the moment and in the big picture, and if you’re not creating a whole bunch of negative emotion on top of the already uncomfortable unanswered desire by arguing or pushing at your desire.

Now, making these considerations and thinking it through without arguing, for most people, isn’t where it ends.

For some of you some of the time, that will be enough for you to choose your true want of not bingeing and not eating more.

But in the other times, there’s another piece to this.

It’s not just choosing your true want of not bingeing, it’s also choosing what comes along with saying no to the false want that you think you want in the moment, that want to binge.

It’s choosing to feel the urge.

It’s choosing the discomfort.

That becomes the obstacle. That becomes your focus.

You may want to continue to focus on your desire to binge or not binge but, your work now is focusing on your desire to feel the urge or not.

It’s not about the food anymore, it’s about the feeling.

And just like I talked about a moment ago with your desire to eat more, you’re not going to try and push the urge away, resist it, or argue with it.

You’re going to allow it to be there, telling yourself it’s the better option than eating to make it go away.

And telling yourself it’s temporary, that you can handle this, and it will be so worth it.

You’re going to talk yourself through the urge, focusing on the urge.

Keeping calm with it, allowing it, and encouraging yourself through it.

You will make it through and when you do, you’ll get your true want.

It’s waiting for you on the other side.

Saying no to your false desires that you think you want in the moment is possible for you and it doesn’t have to be a struggle or a super uncomfortable experience.

It can actually feel good to say no when you’re doing it in a useful way, a way that’s aligned with what you truly want and your long-term and short-term goals.

It may not feel good immediately but, give it a moment, and it will.

It feels good to be aligned with your true wants but sometimes you have to go through a little discomfort to get there.

Alright, now you go out and get what you truly want, even if it’s hard or uncomfortable.

I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye.