What is Your Underlying Commitment to Yourself?

For the past four years you've been saying you want to lose twenty pounds, but here you are today not having met that objective.  So you wake up and decide today is the day.  You tell yourself, "I can do it! I'm going to make healthy choices."  You begin the morning by eating a bowl of oatmeal and a slice of whole wheat bread and leave for work feeling empowered.  Then, after eating a beautiful green salad for lunch, you have an urge for something sweet and decide to lean over and take a couple of bites of your best friend's cheesecake.  It's so good that you just can't stop, and like any good friend you help her finish it off.  Then, after a long day, you go for your favorite---a hamburger and fries---for dinner.  You rationalize your choice by saying that you had time only to stop for fast food because you worked late and by God you deserve that burger anyway.  For the moment you feel better.  Guilt eludes you and your rationalization keeps you from looking around to see if there is a deeper cause for this choice. Your excuse for your consistent behavior stops you from unearthing the source of your self-sabotage.  But then while you're getting ready for bed you begin to feel bad about the choices you made.  The burger and fries no longer feel so good, and that moment of bliss turns on you quickly, becoming a source of shame, robbing you of your goals and desires and feeding your resignation.  You go to sleep swearing that tomorrow will be a new day.  You wake up wanting to eat well and stick to your diet, but sometime around 4p.m., after having a healthy breakfast and lunch, you succumb once again to that urge for a little snack.  Then you're off again and the cycle repeats itself.  This is a day in the life of an underlying commitment.  

Is this bad?  Only if you hate yourself for eating badly that day.  It's a disempowering choice if you beat yourself up over it.  It's the most common human struggle.  When you are making choices that lead you further from your goal rather than closer to it, you know that you are operating on top of an underlying commitment.

If this example is familiar to you, I would ask you to become aware of what commitment is present for you when you are eating foods that are not supporting you to reach your goal.  You can do this by asking yourself, "What am I committed to in this moment?"  The only way to stop this battle is to acknowledge what is going on.

(Parts of this story are an excerpt from the book The Right Questions by Debbie Ford)