Shifting behaviours has been a bit of a struggle for me my entire life. Why? When I was young, I thought that I should be thinner. So I did a lot of what I thought “I should do” to get there, which boiled down to exercising and diets. You see, what I learned was to restrict, push and judge myself into taking the “right” action. And the curious thing: I always felt that I worked so hard, but never that I had reached my dream body. Instead, I developed a mild binge-eating disorder and a resistance towards movement that feels hard.
“Marlene” – you may wonder – “what has all this to do with my taking action towards my dreams?” Well, I am glad you asked 🙂
Let me ask you a question:
have you ever found yourself on this journey towards your dream, either
- taking action like there was no tomorrow and ditching all your self-care practices (definitely me🖐🏼) or
- not taking action at all and instead distracting yourself with Netflix, Instagram, cleaning,… (also me 🖐🏼🖐🏼) o
- seeing all the things that are still left to do and where you have fallen short vs. seeing all that you have already done (aaand me again big time 🖐🏼🖐🏼🖐🏼)?
🖐🏼🖐🏼🖐🏼
If your answer was “yes” to any of these questions you want to continue reading.
I hope it makes sense if I say:
👉🏽 if you continue taking action without a break you’ll end up burned out.
👉🏽 If you continue not taking action at all, you’ll end up depressed.
👉🏽 If you continue never seeing the progress you have made, you’ll end up being an unsatisfied, hungry ghost.
If however, you do want to achieve your dreams and goals in a sustainable, joyful and easy way, it’s crucial to look at your behaviours and habits.
So here are the two main things I learned from my binge eating disorder about taking action:
- If you can’t seem to change your behaviours this is a symptom of something deeper going on, it’s not a symptom of you not doing enough.
“If I just went to bed earlier, if I just exercised more, if I just communicated more on social media, if I just stopped eating sugar all would be fine”.
This is a sentence, I often hear from my mind and clients. Here is the thing though: your actions, behaviours and habits are at the END of an entire cycle. Your actions are defined by your emotions & thoughts and these again are influenced by your nervous system. So if you are stuck in a behavioural pattern,
🛑 stop forcing yourself
✅ start learning how to regulate your nervous system so you feel safe no matter what you feel. Change will take place naturally when your nervous system feels safe.
✅ start shifting your mental programming
✅ start holding space for your emotions.
- Success has not a lot to do with what you are doing. Success has all do to with how much you love yourself.
This is something I wished our parent’s generation knew: success has not a lot to do with what you are doing. Success has all to do with how much you love yourself. Especially those parts within you that you have learned to judge and criticise so harshly.
“When I am thin, then I am more attractive and then others will like and love me more, then I am worthy of belonging”
“When I am successful, then I know that all I believe in is true, then others will see this too and me as someone worthy.”
Does this or another “when…then…” statement sound familiar? The desire to get to our dream is so strong because we attach something to it. You can see it in the sentences above: We attach our lovability, our worthiness, our freedom… to it. Often this fuels our motivation. But believe it or not, this is a fear-based motivation because you are trying to walk away from something you don’t like:
“When I am thick, then I am not attractive, then others don’t like me, then I am not worthy of belonging”
“When I am a failure, then all I believe in is a lie, then others won’t believe me nor will they see me as worthy”
Chances are high that in the past you have had experiences where you didn’t feel worthy, or loved. Where you felt like an absolute failure. And I bet you didn’t like that feeling and that failed version of you back then. I didn’t like the chubby version of me either. I didn’t like her AT ALL.
I didn’t desire to be thin. I just didn’t want to feel unworthy. I was trying to run away from that part of me that I felt so annoyed by and frustrated with. And that fear of feeling unworthy fueled all those senseless actions I took, like working out obsessively, restricting my food intake and learning so much about all sorts of diets.
Later on, the same fear fueled my resistance towards taking action because I was so tired of having to improve myself, so I just numbed myself so I didn’t have to feel my unworthiness.
But do you know what true success is? True success is to love yourself no matter what. True success is you loving your unworthy parts.
No matter how you look,
no matter how much money you make,
no matter what your lifestyle is,
even if all these things are not how you want them to be,
can you love yourself? Can you see all the progress you have made?
When you love yourself unconditionally, it’ll feel much easier to take action because you’re not taking it to improve yourself.
If you resonate with this at all, try this:
🛑 stop judging and punishing yourself
✅ notice whenever you feel scared, disempowered, or unworthy. Write down your thoughts and sensations here
✅ have an honest and loving conversation with a younger version of you and see what it needs
✅ look back in time and see how far you have already come.
✅ read and feel this: you are a gift to this world, truly.
With so much love and care,
Marlene
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marlene.zehnter
BOCHUM, GERMANY + BEYOND
Realising Dreams One Nervous System at a Time.
Changing the way we work one nervous system at a time.
Falling in love with life one nervous system at a time.
info@marlenezehnter.de
