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Where's Your Pleasure? Where's Your Pain?
So often in my coaching I get to see and hear where people are holding on to their pain or sometimes their pleasure and it can be their own devised trap. It keeps them from being free and happier. IF, and that can be a big if, they are willing they can learn so much from these trappings and then make a giant leap forward in having a richer, fuller, and more fun life. I used to be a sugar fiend. When I switched to healthier sugars like brown rice syrup, my health improved but the cravings did not leve me. I still was pulled and pushed by my desires for having pleasure come from sweets. When I was in emotional or physical pain, the first thing I wanted to turn to was something in the food realm and may it be fun, decadent and sugary. Then I had the experience of going without any sweets even fruit for an entire year. I went through my emotions until I finally no longer had any push or pull on treats at all. They just became a normal kind of a pleasure that I could take or leave and still find plenty of pleasure elsewhere. Would you be willing to let go of your coffee for a year? What about sex or extra curricular shopping, or anything that has control over you. If you think you can give up your daily coffee habit but find yourself going back to it again and again and still again, it might have more control than you think. If you really let it go and give your body a nice break you might find you have more energy, focus and an extra few hundred dollars at the end of a year.
What about the pain that you let lead your life? Would you be willing to give that up? I see many people use an illness to cover up their fear. For example, a person who could get well but doesn't really even try because they are functional and yet the illness keeps them from intimacy so they never get hurt. Or for others it might be staying in a certain income bracket that they really do not like, but it keeps them from having to take more responsibility. Their pain is comforting to theses people and feels safer than having their life be more free and full and joy filled. Since we will often do more to get out of pain though it can be a wonderful motivator if you let it. Where ever you feel a degree of pain in your life, look to see where you might be keeping it so you don't have to change. Then take an action that might be a little scary towards where you really would like to be. Having a coach makes it easier to keep leaping but you can do it on your own. Be aware and courageous and have the life you want to be living!
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Susan,
This is exciting to read this - your first paragraph describes exactly the "soft addictions" work we do at the company I work for. I admire you going without sugar for a year and choosing to be conscious of your feelings. I've given up several of what I'll call soft addictions and coffee is something that I am so not willing to let go of! You've given me something to think about and reorient to what it is that I want out of my life. I know that coffee is not it.
Thanks,
Jillian
Hi Jillian, thanks so much for your comment. My experience with coffee is a little different. I used to love that too. Especially cappuccino! I loved the ritual of coffee in the morning and the taste, the body, the whole experience. Then I learned about acid/alkaline and I needed to experiment and create a more balanced diet because there were far too many acidic factors zapping my energy and dragging me down. I made coffee into a treat that I would have once a week. (After the initial cutting it down so I wouldn't have severe withdrawal...) I started to have it once a week especially at my favorite place to have an excellent cappuccino. Then I missed a week and when I did finally have my lovely giant cup of Java, whew, did I feel awful. I felt poisoned, toxic and shaky. I thought maybe the caffeine was effecting me so the next one I had was decaf and I felt worse. I expressed this to a group of friends who practice yoga and they said they felt worse with decaf too. All of the feeling badly after each time I was just after the enjoyment of a "treat", I finally just quit drinking it all together. I guess when I had started drinking coffee it was not just slowly but I had more other junk in my body too so I didn't notice the affects it really had on me. I then learned how most people are really feeling rather poorly quite a lot of the time but they don't know the difference so that poorly is their normal. Once you lift out of that, you really won't want to go back again. Experiment with your foods, learn all you can and create a life you really want to be living!
Susan, I live with someone who likes alcoholic drinks too much and I waif between having one and not, whereas anything with sugar leaves me feeling loggy or yuk. Alcohol converts to sugar, so it isn't all that good for my bpd, many people do not admit that it is a 'sweet' in perception by our body. I feel best with very little 'sugar in my gastank' and wonder how many others would also benefit by a 'sugar watch'. When I was 'a purist' on this concept, I had no extra body fat, no cellulite, and lots of energy.
I'm inspired to read your words, so I will set a new self goal to return to my 'purist state' on my intake of carbs/sugars/alcohol. Carol
I'm happy to inspire you Carol. No need to be a purist as it is okay to just switch to better quality sweets like fruit or using rice syrup. I'm baking cookies for a friend right this moment that I've used rice syrup as the sweetener and also grain sweetened chocolate chips that I purchased in a bag at whole foods. No diary or sugar in these lovely linzer cookies.
Thank you for your openness and honesty.
I would imagine that some people are aware of their 'hangups' while others don't even realize they are doing it.
Like for me, I am fully aware of my pleasure hangup..it's smoking. To a non-smoker this may seem more like pain.. but its not that much different then coffee-- the morning ritual, the social scene, the habit.
My pain is a little harder to figure out. Are there specific questions we could ask ourselves to help us figure it out?
Great way to start investigating Beth! Do you feel that your smoking is covering anything at all? Is is perhaps just a pleasure that you picked up and got hooked on? Would you like to stop? If you would like to stop, what stops you from stopping? What excuses do you make up for yourself?
Another fun thing to do is write down 3 things that are working in your life and 3 things that are not working in your life. Do that now before you read the rest of this email....
Did you do it?
Okay, now write "I'm committed to" In front of each sentence. Do you notice anything that you might want to shift? Of the three that are not working for you, are you willing to take action to make those things better? What action are you willing to do? I'm more committed to my health than to the pleasure of coffee for example. I'm more committed to health than the pleasure of smoking. I'm more committed to my health than I am to fitting in with a group of people. You might want to look at what value and get in alignment with what you really want to be valuing. I do enjoy socializing and I am happy to have water or not eat at all just to be at the party if the offerings are going to make me feel poorly later, it just isn't worth it for the five or so minutes of fitting in and sharing with something on that level. You can see this could easily turn into a whole coaching session but I think this gives you a start. Let me know.
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