What will it take for you to take the time you need for yourself?
The answer I heard in one of my coaching groups today was “getting really sick.” That’s what it took for this participant to start to learn to say “no” to the demands of others so that she had some space to say “yes” to her own needs. It was only after she bent over backwards making incredible sacrifices, AND after her health and her life suffered dramatically, that she was able to assert her need to take care of herself and prioritize her own wants and needs.
Emotional eating can be a really “convenient” strategy for quieting our needs or attempting to satisfy them indirectly. It doesn’t take a lot of time—we can even multitask while we do it. Emotional eating doesn’t require us to say “no” to anyone else. The problem is, it doesn’t really work. In the end, we still need whatever it was we needed, we’ve eaten food we didn’t really need to eat, and we are likely mad or upset with ourselves for having done so.
What will it take for you to take the time you need for yourself? How can you do things differently? How can you start to expand the amount of space and time you allow yourself? If you’ve found some solutions I’d love to hear about what has worked for you.
Please share your comments and ideas!
Take good care,
Melissa
