Living Deliberately; Living with Intention
How many times have you heard "Diets don't work." Sure they do! If you follow them correctly! Compliance is the challenge. Many types of diets can sate our hunger and provide all the proper nutrients but we all still deal with cravings, triggers, and habits.
I had a severe food addiction and I live with the thought that tendency must still live in me. I do not want to ever find myself beginning to slip back into former destructive habits so I have taught myself various mental strategies. One of the strategies I learned very early on when my surgery was still recent was to simply ask myself, "Am I hungry right now?" I might feel like eating something but was I experiencing that because I was actually hungry? Very often the answer was NO and I'd take time out to assess what I really was feeling. Boredom? Habit? A need to have a brief distraction? By stepping back and evaluating the situation, I could choose some other way to address what I really wanted at that moment. Instead of eating mindlessly, I chose my response to my feelings at that time in an intentional and deliberate manner.
I also find a lot of strength and actually a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in what I think may be similar to a strategy used in Method Acting. Think of it as archiving a specific feeling you want to remember and use when you need to draw on it.
It seems like my rides home on the bus after my training session have become an integral part of the whole ritual! I happen to take a bus I get on at its origination so I can choose my seat. I sit in the very last corner by the window. I feel tucked away in my spot where I can block out the people around me and spend the travel time in my own head. I always have that wonderful worked-out feeling and I love to simply sit and enjoy how good it feels and how great I feel for having worked as hard as I did. I think about what I liked the best about my training session and what I think challenged me the most. Whatever may have happened in my day before my session seems completely wiped out. There doesn't seem to be anything that could make me feel any less than WONDERFUL when I am in that reflective, almost meditative experience.
I mentally file away and store that feeling experience. I can use it when I am faced with a choice that might undermine what I work to accomplish by my training and hard work. It becomes much easier to make deliberate, intentional choices to maintain positive and facilitative habits in my daily life. I CHOOSE to avoid nutritionally-deficient foods and nourish myself correctly. I CHOOSE to exercise on the days off from my trainer sessions so that I can keep progressing in my physical development. I CHOOSE to get myself into bed to get adequate rest (TV is NOT that important!). I CHOOSE to maintain neat and orderly environments where I live and work so that my thinking and my sense of organization is not cluttered. All this gives me an overall sense of being in control of myself and my life.
I live deliberately.
I live with intention.
I hope this gives you some ideas how you might tap into a resource of powerful experience to put to work in your life! I wish you strength!
I had a severe food addiction and I live with the thought that tendency must still live in me. I do not want to ever find myself beginning to slip back into former destructive habits so I have taught myself various mental strategies. One of the strategies I learned very early on when my surgery was still recent was to simply ask myself, "Am I hungry right now?" I might feel like eating something but was I experiencing that because I was actually hungry? Very often the answer was NO and I'd take time out to assess what I really was feeling. Boredom? Habit? A need to have a brief distraction? By stepping back and evaluating the situation, I could choose some other way to address what I really wanted at that moment. Instead of eating mindlessly, I chose my response to my feelings at that time in an intentional and deliberate manner.
I also find a lot of strength and actually a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in what I think may be similar to a strategy used in Method Acting. Think of it as archiving a specific feeling you want to remember and use when you need to draw on it.
It seems like my rides home on the bus after my training session have become an integral part of the whole ritual! I happen to take a bus I get on at its origination so I can choose my seat. I sit in the very last corner by the window. I feel tucked away in my spot where I can block out the people around me and spend the travel time in my own head. I always have that wonderful worked-out feeling and I love to simply sit and enjoy how good it feels and how great I feel for having worked as hard as I did. I think about what I liked the best about my training session and what I think challenged me the most. Whatever may have happened in my day before my session seems completely wiped out. There doesn't seem to be anything that could make me feel any less than WONDERFUL when I am in that reflective, almost meditative experience.
I mentally file away and store that feeling experience. I can use it when I am faced with a choice that might undermine what I work to accomplish by my training and hard work. It becomes much easier to make deliberate, intentional choices to maintain positive and facilitative habits in my daily life. I CHOOSE to avoid nutritionally-deficient foods and nourish myself correctly. I CHOOSE to exercise on the days off from my trainer sessions so that I can keep progressing in my physical development. I CHOOSE to get myself into bed to get adequate rest (TV is NOT that important!). I CHOOSE to maintain neat and orderly environments where I live and work so that my thinking and my sense of organization is not cluttered. All this gives me an overall sense of being in control of myself and my life.
I live deliberately.
I live with intention.
I hope this gives you some ideas how you might tap into a resource of powerful experience to put to work in your life! I wish you strength!
posted by Dagny at
5:11 AM
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