What is the real journey?

One of my most ardent supporters, cheerleader and friend commented recently , “this is about so much more than weight loss.” That has stuck in my head and I wholeheartedly agree. I never wanted it to be about weight loss or a number. I don’t want to feel like I failed if I don’t hit some number that a chart says I should weigh. I wanted it to be about my being able to live my life, make good choices, being happy, and believe in myself.

How to believe in yourself all over again!

There was a time in my life that I believed in myself. I remember how it felt to feel like I was doing things right. Maybe not perfectly right, but I was doing right by myself, my two kids at the time and I was on a great spiritual path as well. We would all like to say that it is easy to get on the bandwagon again, but its not always the case. It is a process that you have to go through because most likely you have been through some type of trauma that made you stop believing in yourself. And if its been a while, its even harder. My steps may be different from yours because I believe your spiritual beliefs play into it quite a bit.

For me, the first step is believing and trusting in the Lord. He has suffered for every sin, every emotion, every pain, every negative feeling that we have ever had. HE is the one person that knows exactly what we are going through, so take your worries to Him and He will help you through if you let Him.

Next thing that has helped me is removing negative people from my life. I don’t mean sending them a hate letter and telling them to never contact you again, but more just reducing the amount of exposure to them and not letting them have a large part of your time or worry. You have to draw boundaries with people like that. You know what YOU need so don’t let anyone hinder you getting it.

Positive self talk is also a very important step. Unfortunately our brains are hardwired to remember negative experiences in our lives more so than positive. Because of that, our self talk tends to lean to the negative side. “Oh gosh Kristi, you screwed that up!” “Man, I really am a bad mom today because I didn’t cook a good dinner for the kids!” “Why does everyone at my job not like me!” Yea, those are things I have thought before, but all negative self talk can be flipped and it is a conscience decision to do that at first. Positive self talk means that you are giving yourself grace. You are showing yourself some compassion. “Kristi, that wasn’t your best work, but you gave it your all and will do better next time.” “Yea, kids ate spaghetti O’s for dinner, but you also fed them great veggies.” “What kindness can I show to those around me?” Positive self talk is knowing that you made mistakes but choosing to learn from them rather than wallow in them. When life gives you lemons make delicious lemonade!

I know weight loss and the number are a real thing, but I chose to focus on the non scale side of my journey. I couldn’t achieve most of what I want to without losing weight so don’t think I am ignoring that part of my journey. I just chose to put my focus on the end result, which for me is being happy. That happiness entails so much, but overall I want to be happy. Happy as a mom, happy spiritually, happy temporally, just happy and content with life.