At 8:30 am Pacific Time today (in a few hours!) I’ll be offering the live webinar on ending eating and food wars. You’ll participate with your keyboard at your computer, not by voice. A new experiment!
I’ll offer a slide show I just put together with my fairly beginner keynote skills. Come join me, so I can interact with you and your questions. Since you won’t be talking out loud, you can be completely anonymous and ask me anything.
Click here to get the link, and you’ll be added to Eating Peace where I’ll continue to send videos and SOS help once a week to you if you’re struggling with the kind of craziness I used to live in almost daily…
…endless thoughts of food, managing food, staying away from food, over-exercising, dieting, being all freaky-perfect about ingredients.
And speaking of those kinds of thoughts about food…. wow, perfectionism is rough.
Yesterday I got to facilitate the work with a sweet and very sincere client around her desire to be as perfect as possible…and it reminded me that this push to be in the highest rankings isn’t only held inside the minds of people with eating issues.
In fact, my family had some pretty high standards, and they didn’t get all whacked out about eating like I did.
My dad was a Rhodes Scholar. Which means he went to Oxford University in England to earn his D-Phil (same as PhD). He became an author and a professor. My mom got her master’s degree in Spanish literature, and spoke fluent Spanish after living in Spain as a student.
That was the soup flavor I was born into.
The thing is….NOW….I find all the accomplishment quite exciting and beautiful.
But back then, I felt….well….
….*PRESSURE*!!!!
The mind can take things so seriously, you know?
My chattering mind as a teenager had the attitude that I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to….
….accompanied by an equal and opposite force of I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
Geneen Roth, the brilliant woman who writes about food, spirituality, and ending a life of dieting said long ago that she observed in herself and in the people she worked with that for every diet, there was an opposite binge.
Deny. Grab. Deny. Grab.
It’s like a pendulum swinging insanely, wildly, without coming to rest in the middle.
Today, no matter what kind of “shoulds” or “I have to’s” or “I musts” you throw at yourself…notice the voice that tries to balance the high achiever.
That voice gets so alarmed by all the pushing, it will say “be careful!” or “you shouldn’t” or “you don’t have to”.
The result?
*S*T*U*C*K*!
Instead of listening to any of that….slow down.
Way, way, way down.
Hold still a minute.
See if it’s really true that you have to, or the opposite, that you shouldn’t even try?
What if you sat still until you noticed what you wanted to do, say, or be?
No comparison to anyone else. No degrees or special winning or big fat competitions or earning anything major.
Just you, being you.
You might win the Olympic Gold Medal or lead the entire company or get the part on Broadway, or you might not…but if there’s just you, in the flow, being you…it won’t matter one way or the other.
“Life without a reason, a purpose, a position… the mind is frightened of this because then ‘my life’ is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension. This way of living is just life moving. That’s all.” ~ Adyashanti
You are good enough, doing nothing, and doing something, just the way you are. No comparison.
“The Master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn’t cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her.” ~ Tao Te Ching #63
Much love, Grace
P.S. Pass this email along to anyone who you think might benefit from entering a world of peace around eating. Thank you.