It can be a slippery slope to using exercise as a way to suppress the lack of fulfillment in parts of your life—hobbies, job, relationships ... All of these things work off one another at any given time. Fulfilment is part of this. You may develop more awareness around how you’re moving, your thoughts and beliefs with your body but you still find it hard to move away from restrictive behaviours for the quest of being smaller. Here’s something to roll with: you do not need to suppress those behaviours or even avoid them—it’s a process. Let yourself be in this weird place where you feel confused or feel like something is missing. It’s an indicator to try some new hats on to see what fits and identify what health is to you and where your middle ground is within it all. A part of finding more peace with your body is recognising that not everything has a quick fix. More often than not you do have to sit in the discomfort of being in this messy confusing place.
Let yourself exist in it. That’s where you will get the answers. If you can breathe through this and remind yourself that you don’t have to do anything about it RIGHT now? That is when you can drop into those thoughts of the possibility of doing something different. When you’re panicking and stressed the answers aren't going to come. ‘Where you’re at is exactly where you need to be.’ If you’re like me, you're sick of hearing this. When you feel stressed of course you want to be somewhere else. But you’re learning things in the order you need to learn them in. You don’t have to move fast anymore. This is your life. Allow yourself to go at the pace you need to go. You will figure it out. I'm saying this with you: ‘no’ to the need to control and fix. In these moments force yourself to say no: allow the learnings to come up and the answers will come. But the more you distract yourself from existing in that discomfort the harder it will be.
To learn about what you are truly capable of, to stop second guessing yourself, feel like an athlete in the gym but participate in life outside of the gym, go here to get on the waitlist for The Bold Collective. You can learn more about it here.