onceafatgirl

Building my peace muscle

One of the things about getting my eating under control is that I don’t have a lot of room to *not* grow. And this year I just sort of decided that peaceful, purposeful, joyful creation is the “theme” of my year. And apparently now I am committed.

Already I feel like I have had so much purposeful and joyful creation!

But I also committed to being peaceful. And boy when I tell you I was not expecting Peace to go so hard!

I am a mentor to people who don’t eat sugar. And I have a lot of advice to give. (Solicited only! I do not believe in unsolicited advice.) And one thing I understand is that to be a good mentor, you have to be willing to take your own advice.

And ain’t that a bitch sometimes.

So when my mentees would come to me and need practical advice about how to stop thinking about food, (or eventually their ex husband, the test results for their biopsy, their kid’s relationship with the other parent that they have no control over) I would tell them to “change the channel.” To make an active and concerted effort to think a new thought. Put oneself in a new frame of mind and body.

So what I decided for myself in practical/actionable terms was to be deliberate in all things. To make choices and take actions from a calm place of Trust. To commit without fear, without second guessing, without looking back. And that means everything from writing my morning journal to showering to making food to crocheting to driving to the grocery store to putting my wallet in my purse.

For now that means slowing down to do a lot of things. But I know that purposeful and exact doesn’t have to mean slow. The internet is filled with artists and artisans who are methodical and precise with incredible speed. I am a craftsperson. I can simultaneously be quite fast and precise.

But those first few days this week of “being deliberate” were terrifying. Because I realized that my default is mind chaos. My default is waking and thinking in circles (literally, though I do sometimes dance, not in circles.) And I had to “change the channel” so many times I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. (Oh, this thought is an old friend from when I hated myself for being fat and thinking it meant I was “fundamentally broken.”)

I would realize how amped up I was. I would calm down body and mind. And within seconds I would realize again. And do it again. And then again too quickly.

I thought about giving up. Which is not a thing I think very often anymore. 

But I trusted that almost everything can be built like a muscle. Or at least I acted like I trusted.

Just like when I got my fancy new mini stepper and I had to put my whole foot on each pedal, until I built the core muscle to balance on my toes. There was no way to start on my toes. And if I had given up, I still wouldn’t be able to do it. But I can.

So I just keep plugging along. Changing the channel. Going to that peaceful place over and over again. Building my Peace muscle. And already it is stronger.