If you’ve recently been reading my eating peace ebook, thanks for being here! You’ve arrived just in time to attend a live webinar I don’t do very often, in preparation for the Eating Peace Experience coming up at the end of January.
Eating Peace Webinar: Monday January 13th 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 7:00pm Europe. Sign up here to attend live and ask me anything. There are also 4 other options for taking this live masterclass–you’ll see them when you click the link to register. A great opportunity to listen, share and do this work together.
(If you’d rather not be on this list, scroll down an unsubscribe any time. I usually send out an email and eating peace video around once every ten days).
Looking at the world through the eyes of opposites, of right and wrong, of duality….is common. It’s often the only way we seem to know.
In this belief system, there is a Right Way and a Wrong Way to be. With food, eating, body size, appearance.
Right/Wrong, Mistaken Way/ Correct Way, Bad/Good, Successful/Failure, Uncertain/ Certain, Strong/ Wishy-Washy, I Know/ I Don’t Know, Against it/ For It.
Everything’s very black and white, and “clear” in a way, and that’s the GOAL. To know the FINAL answer (like the game show, LOL).
In this world, no ambivalence is allowed, no uncertainty. It’s much better to have certainty and to be right about your way. You might even have supporting data for how your way is the best way, perhaps even the only way.
And then….a “mistake” is made.
Trouble is, when YOU screw up or make a mistake….you follow the usual steps of self-attack, punishment, criticism, anger, disappointment, confusion, fear and a return to “your” way (which is the “right” and “best” way).
I love thinking about all the right/wrong perspective and how it lives so fully in our minds sometimes. It happens in ways that are so much more than only food, eating and body image.
Last week, for example, I offered my live webinar for the first time and made a “mistake” of locking people out of it.
So, the live webinar went to no one “live”.
It was a fun teaching and this material is incredibly profound and powerful for help with understanding the suffering around eating issues–at least it has been for me–but I had no interaction or questions or chats, which seemed confusing.
No comments, no feedback, no emojis.
But is it true that I made a mistake?
Consider the times you’ve taken a compulsive bite of food. You’ve repeated the pattern of overeating, over-indulging, eating the “wrong” thing, shame, secretive thinking. The pain of stuffing in food chaotically without caring about yourself.
Who would you be without the energy of right/wrong and condemnation about this experience?
What if you opened your mind, relaxed with yourself gently, and turned to the possibility that you are not a problem, and there is another way?
Who would you be without the idea that a mistake has been made? Who would you be without the belief you’re sick and twisted and broken and you have to crack down and be rigid?
What if there was another way besides being RIGHT or WRONG?
What if I can notice I’m panic-eating….and be mindful and do The Work of inquiry and shifting my own mind?
Turning the thought around: I have not made a terrible mistake.
I can start again, today, right now. I can breathe deeply, regroup, get support.
Turning around the thought again: my thinking is making a terrible mistake
Yes, especially when I condemn myself and the world and eating and food and weight and other people–or anything else in reality.
Much love,
Grace