Change #6 - RESISTANCE
Sugar is blinding me to my truth. Weird but true.
I have found life’s big stuff gets derailed by sneaky little things. For example, eating sugar is blinding me to my truth. I know this sounds strange but stay with me.
As a child, I lived on a farm most weekends and all summer, the rest of the time in a city. On our way to and fro we would stop at a gas station in the small town by our farm, my Dad would gas up and go inside to pay. It felt like he would be in there a long time, partly because my Uncle owned the gas station, but also because I would wait on pins and needles to see if he would come out with a chocolate bar for me. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t but I yearned for one every time, just as my greatest desire was my very own bag of chocolate chips. You get the idea—sugar hound!
Despite my best efforts, sugar has stayed in my life. Sometimes none, sometimes a little, and sometimes (like recently) a lot. Habits like this are excellent distractors and, this past year, as I’ve cared for my elderly Mom and sat at her deathbed, I relied heavily on it as a pain reliever. I was exhausted and hurting so sugar to the ‘rescue’. Almost any form would do, except alcohol (also a form of sugar). It altered my brain chemistry with a temporary boost that numbed my pain. This happens without our knowing of course. It’s not like I would think…
‘Damn, my heart is breaking, and it hurts so much I can’t stand it, oh and I’m exhausted, and this really sucks so I’ll eat this cookie’.
That would be easier to recognize than an insidious little habit that’s become a part of me.
Big feelings like boredom, grief, chronic frustration, disappointment, and confusion are distinctly uncomfortable. It’s hard to sit with these feelings and allow them to guide us because it hurts and creates uncertainty. Who wouldn’t want to turn away?
Someone who wants to feel better in the big picture, that’s who. Someone who wants a different kind of life, that’s who.
Our conditioning, and our ego, will distract us from what these clues are showing us. Our patterned brain points us to lifestyle choices that take us in a different direction – a path that allows us to very temporarily feel better. Remember LOUDYPANTS?
This is how sugar (or insert action of choice) while seeming like a pesky little habit, can blind us to what is important.
When we give up the habit we shut off this part of our ego. While I’m no psychologist, I know the ego is a very powerful part of our subconscious mind and it does not like being ignored so it will resist this change. Ego’s wingman, justification, will come to win us over with ‘you can start on Monday or it doesn’t really matter if you eat that one piece of chocolate’. THIS IS RESISTANCE, THIS IS FEAR. Fear of what the boredom, exhaustion or fully showing up for yourself have to show you. Be brave and sit with it. Don’t allow your true self to hide. While it might get spicy, it won’t last.
Resistance shows up any time we try to change. It does not mean you are weak but it does show you’re human and something is asking for your attention. Prepare for it by having clarity on why you want to make this change. If you hold on to how you want to feel the resistance will soften and eventually disappear fully. Your habit will lose its grip as you create new brain pathways and you will have greater energy to expand the way you want to.
As the great Brene Brown says
We can choose courage, or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.
You don’t need an overhaul, my Dear, life is far too busy, and you are far too awesome, for that. But our tricky world does ask you to show up fully as who you are. I know how scary that sounds so if you would like a few ideas on how to do this you can see all of my essays on creating change that moves us closer to wholeness here.
Also, I invite you to join my presentation
THE WISDOM of CHANGE: weaving the tools of science & spirit for lasting change
January 14 10:00 MTN, a recording will be provided if you can’t make it in person. I would love for you to come.
This presentation is for my paid subscribers, I invite you to become one HERE.
I deeply appreciate you tuning in to The Bright Life, your presence means the world to me❤
xoxo Donna
P.S. Here are all the articles in my series on preparing for change that moves us closer to wholeness.
Wonderful piece, Donna. As always, very helpful and delivered in a fun way.
I feel that the little addictions like sugar are particularly insidious precisely because we don’t think they’re that bad. And that justification keeps is locked in.
Thanks for this Donna 💕 I loved your phrasing about justification being the wingman of resistance - so true! The mind is a powerful thing and can convince us to make choices that provide short term reward (dopamine) which are not always in our best interest in the long run. I appreciate your encouragement to explore the root cause of the desire or craving and courageously sit in the discomfort.