How to Create a Clear Vision for Overcoming Emotional Eating and Living the Life You Want | TMOHP 160

Hey everybody, welcome back, or welcome, glad you're here. It is still January and there is still so much talk about goals and resolutions. So I thought I would do an episode on one of the pieces that is so essential, that always gets skipped. If you really want to be successful with whatever it is this year, I want to talk about How to really feel more successful 12 months from now with what it is that you are starting or restarting or trying to reinforce doing this month.

So let me start with a conversation that I had that I want to share with you with a client. Somebody that I was working with said, you know what, okay. This is it. I'm ready to get really serious this year. I'm ready to really do it this year. She wants things to be different and she is really in the flow with all the January energy and drama and she's full of ideas and insights and she wants to be doing something.

Our brains always are like, okay, what do we do? Let's make this thing happen, right? That's the first step when you make a decision. I'm going to do something. I'm ready to jump in. And she wants to be doing something concrete. To see those results. She is tired of where she is. She is ready for success.

You've been there, right? And so she came to me and she wants to talk about plans. And I said, okay, wait a minute. This is the question I asked her. What do you want to be doing and thinking and feeling and who do you want to be 12 months from now?

What do you want to be doing and thinking and feeling and being? What is, what is it going to require? What will all those things look like that are going to mean that you have achieved your goals?

And, that caught her off guard because like all human beings, she wanted to jump into, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Here's the plan. She's a little surprised by the question. And, really other than a number on the scale that she has in mind. And a list of the things that she won't be doing and won't be eating. She had to take a beat. She had a difficult time answering the question.

Her picture in her mind right now, as she's thinking, okay, I'm ready to do this thing. Was so much about getting to this thing, this goal. And really the picture she has in her mind was not at all about living. Or the lifestyle and the mindset and the new coping strategies that she wants to create. That are not only going to get her to her goal, they are going to sustain her there.

We get so focused on what we want to do that we tend to skip the step of how we want to be. And how we want it to be. Here's the thing. One of the reasons smart, busy women don't succeed with Wellness goals. And actually, I'm particularly talking about changes you want to make with overeating and emotional eating.

One of the reasons that you don't succeed is because you don't have a crystal-clear vision of what living in that success will look like or feel like for you.

The faulty belief, and it's very human, this is just what we do. The faulty belief is, I need to make this thing happen. And then, once I make this thing happen, I will be happy. When I achieve this goal, right? When I get to where I want to be with my eating and my weight, all these other things are going to fall into place.

The real truth is, this is often absolutely backward. It is not that if you get your eating in the place you want it to be. And if there's a number on the scale that feels magical to you, you get there. It is not the truth that all the other things fall into place after that. Again, that is often exactly backward.

If you figure out what the other things are that are supposed to magically fall into place, and you start finding the place you want them to fall into. The place that feels right, the place that gets your needs met. So much of the struggle with food and overeating and emotional eating will often dissolve.

Really? Really? So maybe you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, wait a minute. How can you not have a clear picture of what the success that you really believe you want is going to look like and feel like?

It might sound crazy when I'm talking about this outside of you. But it is not. How often have you been so busy that it feels like you're just moving from one urgent action item to another? You're reacting.

And when this happens, it is so easy to get lost in the trees. I need to do this and I need to do this and I need to do this. And not have a good view of the forest. It is so easy to move through life doing things without taking time to really plot out the things that you want to be doing. And to really consider the end destination that you want to achieve.

And even more crucial, a huge part of this puzzle is that it is so easy to skip the very, very, very important piece about getting clear on how you want to feel. How you want to feel while you are doing the process of getting to your goal. Because spoiler alert, that is how it is going to feel to continue doing the process to stay at your goal.

When you don't have a clear picture of what you want, and most importantly, a clear picture of how you want to feel. When you're not clear on what those dreams really are, what you want your life to feel like. You end up actually feeling stuck or stressed or burnt out or even massively successful. Like you get to the goal, but you're unhappy with how it feels or how hard it is or what it is going to take to keep going.

And spoiler alert, you're probably not sure you are going to be able to keep going. When it comes to changing your eating, overeating, emotional eating, if you don't pay attention to how you want to feel. And by the way, when we dive into this, most of my clients and members of Your Missing Peace, they decide they want to feel freedom.

They want to feel peaceful about their eating. They don't want to feel stressed or overwhelmed or like they have to be hypervigilant all the time. If you're not intentional about creating a path to your goal that creates the feelings that you want to have, you're so likely to end up, even if you achieve your goal, having the process be one more hard thing.

The thing you need to do, you've achieved the goal now, but it's all just a list of one more hard thing. And one more hard thing. That's going to take an extreme act of God or impossible for perfectionism or all the stars aligning for you to be able to maintain it.

You don't need another list of more hard things. Not creating that vision of what you really want and remember, it includes your feelings. That's a recipe for habits that are not going to serve you.

That is what leads to getting in a cycle where you have all these hard things to do and now you're overeating or emotionally eating to soothe yourself or to numb yourself out. And you get stuck in a cycle that just leads to more of the same.

So here is the thing, the January thing. When you don't know what you want, and even when you start to know what you want, or you know, you know what you want, and you're ready to set a goal. The first step isn't taking action.

The first step is painting the clearest, most colorful vision that you can of where you want your hard work and your precious time and your precious energy to take you.

The first step is answering the question. What do I want to be doing and thinking and feeling 12 months from now? Who do I want to be 12 months from now?

Creating a vision, one that you can see and one that you can feel. It should light you up. That vision should excite you. That's how you know it's the right one.

It's not only the first step, it is so incredibly motivating. So much more motivating than some difficult 10 step plan that you are determined to follow, right? Like my client at the beginning of this episode, right? She's so determined, she's ready. Create something that lights you up. Create a vision that you actually want. That you want to enact a vision of who you will be and how you will feel that you can start step by step creating.

This vision and the way it feels, it is going to help you take action. It's going to help you know the steps to take. It is going to help you identify the resources that you need. The support that will help you get there. And also the things that are not going to be helpful. The things that you absolutely don't want to do.

If your vision, and again, it has to include how you want things to feel, the feelings, right? If your vision isn't crystal clear, you're going to spend so much energy wandering around in the dark, and you're probably going to get pulled back to things you have tried over and over and over again, that you already know won't work.

So, how do you create your vision? There are lots of tools that you can use to help with this. In Your Missing Peace, members use a number of resources that are in the portal there. The coaching calls, coaching sessions are really helpful to unlock these pictures and these feelings and to get past limiting beliefs.

Because what you really want isn't always an easy question to answer. It can be kind of scary to say what you really want. Particularly if overeating is this pattern that you've been repeatedly trying to change. And you're feeling maybe less confident than you would like about your ability to do that.

We tend to limit ourselves. It's hard to think about, oh, I want to feel freedom and I want to feel peace. When you're wondering, okay, is it really possible? Maybe I really do have to be really strict with myself.

So this is a question in particular that members find coaching to be very helpful with. The question is, what do you really want? What do you really want? Ask it that way. What do you really want your relationship with food to feel like? Who do you really want to be 12 months from now?

It is not a number on the scale. It is not some perfectionistic vision of superhuman discipline. Let yourself go past that. What do you really want? How do you really want your relationship with food to feel? Talk it through. Use a journal. Give yourself some time. Play with the questions. Try guided visualizations. That's something we use a lot inside Your Missing Peace.

Not every tool is a fit for every person. So you want to play with some things and find what's right for you as you keep playing with the question.

The crucial thing here is to give yourself the space and the time to ask these questions.

Who do you want to meet when you look in the mirror next December, or when you sit down with your journal on New Year's Eve next year?

How do you want to feel? Knowing your answers to these questions, this is big.

This can literally change your life. It has certainly changed mine.

So play with the questions and I'll talk to you soon.