The Power to Change

If you have any intimate knowledge of me as a person, you know my weight is something I have struggled with for a great part of my life.  I have a low self-esteem.  I like to think I hide it well, with the exception of being around those who make me feel comfortable.  But it comes out.  At work, it comes out in a lack of confidence in my job.  I annoy my fiance by saying, "I am going to be fired!  I am not good at my job."  At home, it comes out by hating each piece of food I put in my mouth.

I have said before that if I had the "strength," I would be anorexic.  I thank God that I do not have the strength nor the desperation to fall into any eating disorder such as Anorexia or Bulimia.  But I have read the Thinspiration blogs.  I have made myself eat less to try and not binge later.  My relationship with food is poor, at best.  I will feel bad about myself, talking to my fiance about how I need to lose weight.  Yet, as soon as I get home, I get something to eat.  I hate every bite I have but I can't stop.

I have come to realize that I am addicted to food.  Like any addict, this is my coping mechanism.  I realized this several years ago.  My last two years in college, I had done a complete 180.  I had lost about 50 lbs.  I was working out, counting calories and trying so hard to improve myself.  This makes me feel almost worse about going back to where I was.  After I lost that weight, I found a plateau.  My mom was being supportive and being such, she asked me why I didn't think I could go farther.  My fiance just recently asked me the same thing.  What I said shocked them, I think: "I am afraid to be skinny because what if that isn't good enough for me?"

At my job, I work on a smoking cessation chat project.  I help people stop smoking by giving advice, letting them vent or simply letting them talk out and find the answers to questions.  We all have the tools to best whatever addiction we face.  The photo at the top is something I use for smoking addiction.  I have been meaning to make this list and finally, I have.  The list is this:

I DON'T NEED FOOD!

What I brought is enough.

My wedding day is enough.

My future children are enough.

My next birthday is enough.

My fiance is enough.

I have had enough!

You have the power to change your life.

YOU & no one else!

I have made these affirmations a bookmark.  More importantly, it is sitting in a book my middle sister gave me to read a few months ago (The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown).  This for me is necessary.  How can I be an example for my future children or my future stepson if I cannot even love who I see in the mirror?  How can I preach self-esteem when it is a battle I fight every day and night?  How can I fully love my future husband if I struggle to find something in myself to love?

No more!  At some point, in every addict's life, you have to tell yourself it is enough.  The addiction, whether illicit or mundane, is not worth losing a quality of life.  I may fear what will happen from break this, but I fear more what will happen if I do not.  I want to turn "I am afraid" into "Yes, I can" into "Yes I did it!!"  

Is there something in your life you want to change?  It doesn't have to be an addiction but maybe you want to start a hobby or learn something new.  Maybe you want to go back to school or improve yourself.  The only thing stopping you is you.  Make a motivation list, a list of reasons and a list of goals.  Then, make a plan.  We can change what we don't like or better ourselves if we want.  It is all a matter of Self.

Increasing your Vision: A Growth of Self

What is your eyesight like?  Do you have to wear glasses?  What about contact lenses?  Do you ever struggle to see at night or when walking into the bright daylight from a dimly lit corridor?  Are you reflecting on your sight or vision?

When I looked "Vision" up in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, several types of definitions came up. Interestingly enough, the first two definitions do not relate at all to the sense.  They define to vision as, "something seen in a dream, trance or ecstasy," or, "the act or power of imagination."  So not only is vision related to the sense of sight, but also can be something that is not really there but imagined.

Today, in church, our pastor began to speak about this very topic (thus why I am writing about it now).  The sermon was entitled, "How is your vision?"  The overall point of his sermon was that you cannot reach a point in life without knowing where that point falls.  The next question may be how is that point determined?  I guess that depends entirely on how your Vision is.

In other words, you have to set your goals of growth in life, because no one will do it for you.  And once you achieve the first goals, you must set yourself higher goals.  Without somewhere to go in life, how can we propel forward?  Take, for example, a student who is graduating high school.  Perhaps they have set a goal to complete college.  In college, there are several sub-goals: passing courses, tests, the long nights of studying.  On that day when they walk across the stage, that goal is achieved.  They now have to decide what their next goal is.

Perhaps they will decide that they have had enough school and they want to go into the workplace.  Perhaps they want to further their education and go onto a Master's program.  We cannot move forward in life without knowing where we have come from and, more importantly, where we are going.  Certainly, sometimes we struggle to determine what path we should go down.  Especially in our youth, that is to be expected.  It is a part of learning what our Vision is.

Like everything in life, Vision of life, growth and future is something that is ever changing and ever evolving.  Today, my Vision for my life is much different from when I was in, say, 3rd grade!  Especially when, in 3rd grade, I was planning on becoming a nun.  But that is the beauty of childhood and having supportive adults to surround those children.  Children, you see, have very blurry Vision.  They daydream and change constantly what they "want to be when they grow up."  The beauty of this is they are free to explore the possibilities while the adults can help wrangle those energies in.

We all play a crucial part in one another's Visions.  We must all support one another because we cannot reach our Visions by ourselves.  Many pitfalls befall across our paths.  However, with Faith and the people around us supporting who we are and where we are going, we can never fall short of our goals or our Visions.  Afterall, we set our Visions and goals, but we all need help to achieve them.