It’s now officially winter where I live in NYC and my heaviest black woolen winter coat is back in use. It goes down to my knees and zips up the middle, thankfully keeping the bitter winds out. I’m cosy enough inside it, except for one thing—the pockets.
The bottom of both pockets are ripped open with a big gaping hole in each.
Every time I wear the jacket, I tell myself, “You must fix these pockets.” Yet I don’t.
This means there’s nowhere warm to put my hands, and I find myself scurrying around in the cold feeling uncomfortable, with my fists clenched and my shoulders lifted, cursing myself for not doing anything about it. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve let this go on for the last two winters.
Now that it’s cold again, I’m asking myself, “Am I going to go through a third winter ignoring this source of discomfort?”
I mention it because as the year draws to an end, you may be asking yourself similar questions.
Am I going to continue to turn a blind eye to things that continue to bother me for yet another year?
Will I look back this time next year and still feel the same discomfort with my body and with food?
If you’ve been struggling with the same challenges with food and weight for many years or maybe even many decades, it’s understandable that you may not be approaching the New Year with a zest of optimism that, this time it was going to be different. You may already feel defeated and fear that it is forever going to stay the same.
But the truth is, change and renewal is possible. Your life and your body can transform. Wishful thinking won’t cause magical change, though neither will shaming yourself. When it comes to facing a pattern that’s been entrenched for a long time, as you can imagine, there’s no quick fix.
So how can we stimulate lasting change when it feels so comfortable to stay the same?
To answer that, here are 4 steps for how to face what you’ve been avoiding.
4 Steps to Face What You’ve Been Avoiding
Step #1 Get Ruthlessly Clear About What You Desire & Why
If you’re struggling with your weight and with food, no doubt you have the feeling that this is not what you want. Or is it?
As much as you may lament your woes with your body, they may also bring you a comforting sense of familiarity. As unglamorous as it sounds, feeling unhappy with how you look and feel may be tolerable enough for you, that you are not motivated to make lasting change.
The only way to get over this hump is to be ruthlessly clear about what you desire. Enquire within: What do you desire? What will having that do for you? Why is it important?
For example in the case of my pocketless winter coat, what I want is to be comfortable. When I am walking outdoors in the cold, I want my shoulders to feel relaxed. I want my female body to feel like I have paid attention to her nervous system being at ease.
Lastly, when you discover the answers, let yourself want what you want with all your heart and soul.
Step #2 Get to Know the Present Pattern
Once you know what you want and why, the next step is to take an honest look at firstly, what’s actually happening now. What is really going on that you have been brushing out of your line of sight or sweeping under the carpet?
You can ask yourself: How are you treating your body? How are you tending to your body’s needs? What are your current patterns? Dispel any denial you may have been harboring about you situation.
For example in the instance of my coat with ripped pockets, I’ve been complaining about cold hands, but in reality I’ve been more willing to suffer and procrastinate than I have been to take action to solve the problem.
Step #3 Uncover the Hidden Pay Offs of Ignoring What You Want
One of the reason conventional diets fail is because they only address the surface level of a woman’s struggle with food and weight. To avoid the same mistake we need to go deeper.
And as we do, the complexities of the human psyche are revealed. As a species we have survived multiple tens of thousands of generations by banding together, so much so that now our drive to belong is one of our strongest motivating forces.
The emotional pull towards belonging with others that provide love and safety, is so strong it can override our mind’s rational judgements.
For example, back to my coat, it would have been completely logical for me to have already gotten my hands on a needle and thread and fixed my pockets two years ago. But on an what you might call an other-than-rational level, something else has been going on.
When I really paid attention, I was surprised to notice that when my hands were stinging from the cold, that I would all of a sudden feel a pang of connection with my mother. She grew up in cold and rainy rural Ireland, dirt poor, and at times had no coat at all when she needed one.
When I suffered from cold hands I simultaneously had a feeling of a sense of rapport with her and love for her, and this was my hidden pay-off for delaying fixing my pockets.
Now bringing it back to you, ask yourself:
— What is the hidden pay off you may be getting by not having what you claim to want.
— How does feeling bad about your body and about food, as much as you may lament it outwardly, privately inwardly make you feel safe, familiar and even protected?
— How does you not being the best and most pleasured version of yourself help you for it in to your family of origin or to the culture at large?
Once you understand that you are getting a sub-conscious pay-off for continuing to suffer, also known as the intended positive outcome, you are freed to find other ways to accomplish the same positive intention, without needing to suffer.
Step #4 Cultivate Your Relationships With Women Who Have What You Want & Want You to Have it Too
When I started writing this blog, honestly I didn’t know how was it going to finish. Would I conclude with a public promise to tend to my coat pockets? And would I then dread living up to my word?
In the end, it was a circle of women that finally allowed me to bring my saga with my broken coat pockets to resolution. I had three female house guests visiting and one needed a pillow. The pillowcase, however, had a hole in it, so one of them pulled out her traveling kit of needle and thread.
Soon the kitchen table had transformed into a crafting circle. One mending the pillowcase, another fixing a skirt, all of a sudden, after two years of resisting doing this, I found myself bringing down my jacket, turning the pockets inside out, and going to work to fix them.
It took some time and attention, but relative to the two years I’d been grumbling to myself about my pockets, it was in the mere blink of an eye that my pockets were fixed.
Voila. I couldn’t believe it. It was done. That item that had been dragging on my mental to-do list for so long—poof! Gone. I couldn’t have planned it better. This story backs up the fourth step for facing what you’ve been avoiding—community.
This final step in the sequence is the stabilizing factor for the other three. There’s something about situating ourselves with people or in environments where it is normal to have the thing that we want that automatically helps us get it faster. Simply being conscious to surround yourself with the kinds of people who have what you want helps you move towards having it.
For example the more women you spend time with who have a positive association with pleasure, relaxation, sensuality and femininity, the easier it will feel for you to do the same.
Lastly, the icing on the cake, deepen your connections with women who both have what you want, and also feel passionate about you having it too. This way, you have both a role model and someone taking a stand for your growth and development too.
There you have it, my 4 steps for how to face what you’ve been avoiding. No matter how long you may have been stuck in a rut, every minute of every day is a new chance to initiate a new groove.
With love,
Jena
P.S. Speaking of initiating something new, it’s only a matter of a few weeks until my first book, Pleasurable Weight Loss: The Secrets of Feeling Great, Losing Weight and Loving Your Life Today, comes out in hardback, audiobook and kindle formats and makes its way out into the world.
It’s literally been years that I’ve been receiving emails asking me when my book is coming out and I’m so excited that it is finally here. I swear it’s as if I’m preparing for a real live birth of a new family member! Stay tuned for celebrations 🙂
New York, New York
Diane Abbott
Thank you so much for sharing this, Jenna, how you dealt with this. It was most helpful, and a powerhouse of points to ponder, plus ways for us to truly take big steps forward to change what we’re doing, through awareness, which is key!!! Blessings, and Merry Christmas!