The F Word
It’s a very exciting time for me when a new group of participants begins our Transformative Nutrition 9 week course. Right off the bat the dreaded “F word” came up, as it always does, and the fear of risking FAILURE. You know it, you’ve tried a hundred diets, you’ve lost and gained hundreds of pounds over the years and as you ride the rollercoaster of self-esteem and attention up and down, you grow weary. I think it is actually quite powerful and brave to look at a history of failures and choose to show up again.
I keep this teabag quote on my refrigerator that says, “Failure is not falling down, rather it’s refusing to get up”, (every once in a while I get a good one like that!) What happens is we mistake falling down for failure and in an effort to protect our damaged egos, to avoid the discomfort of feeling disappointed again, when we fall we so often take ourselves out of the game. And THAT is when we fail! It is not the first day we skip the gym, or when we eat dessert during the week when we promised not to. It’s when we pretend it doesn’t matter, when we don’t wake up the next day to workout, or we eat dessert again tomorrow, because we think to ourselves, we blew it! It’s when 5, 10 years goes by and you’ve stopped believing in yourself and your power to impact a lot of things, not just your weight or your health. But even then it’s not too late to succeed. In this game you win just by putting yourself back on the court.
And people may be feeling it now especially in response to broken New Year’s resolutions. Have you taken yourself out of the game because you fell down? My yoga practice has taught me so much about falling and failing. In my life on and off the mat I lose my balance. There are days I am strong and committed, and days I don’t have the strength I need to hold a pose. There are days I progress, and days I maintain. The process of losing weight and keeping it off is the same. If the constant is my commitment to keep coming back to the mat, to my diet, and my life, my practice is active and I have not failed. And when I do keep showing up, I eventually get there and I learn important lessons about myself and what I need along the way.
In this analogy too, success is not only measured in arriving at the goal, either achieving your intended pose or ideal weight, but also in recognizing and acknowledging and appreciating every small step and bit of progress along the way. We all too often miss the preciousness of the process because we’re too busy looking for the end. It’s like trying to rush or skipping the foreplay during sex. Stressful at worst, boring at best!
So my participants asked themselves this week if they were willing to risk the “f word” and fail, and they answered yes! They gave themselves permission to fail or rather fall, and in doing so actually granted themselves permission to succeed as well; to learn from the falling along the way, and actually create the kind of relationship with food they desire.
Finally though, we need to think about what’s going to keep us on the court. That’s when the other “F words” need to come out, as in FOR what, and FUN! Staying connected with why it matters that we play, and taking ourselves less seriously and laughing at ourselves, our excuses, etc, that’s what keeps me in the game. Are you in?
