What Are You Hungry For? (18 page)

Awareness Brings Freedom

For someone who has identified with being fat, the whole story has to change starting at a deep level. (A tiny minority among the obese declare that “fat is beautiful,” and if they are proud to march to a different drummer, that’s fine. Being proud won’t reduce their serious health risks, however, and one generally notices a good deal of defensiveness in their attitude, which suggests that deeper, more negative feelings are present.) Such a person is literally a prisoner who has so little hope that they’ve learned to call prison their home. A mountain of negative experiences, memories, habits, failure, and frustration must be moved. The very thing they have given up on—freedom—needs to become the theme they follow and reinforce every day.

Fortunately, each of us is more than our brain. If you have a pizza in front of you and your brain has triggered the message “You must eat this” or even “You have to eat the whole thing,” you can say no. People who can’t say no feel like prisoners because their impulses
have the upper hand. A part of them watches in dismay as the pizza gets eaten down to the last slice, like a helpless bystander watching a car crash in slow motion. But what is missing is actually basic and simple: a window of freedom.

I’m talking about the small space that opens in your mind before you make a decision. When you eat normally, you are free to choose. You don’t see a pizza and automatically react the way you were conditioned to react. Instead, there’s a space between hunger and choice. In that space you ask yourself, “Am I hungry? How much do I want to eat? Is this the food I would ideally choose?” Someone who is compelled to eat the whole thing no longer enjoys freedom of choice.

The space between hunger and eating, where you make the choice you want to make, isn’t empty. It is filled with awareness. Awareness is close to what people call an open mind. You are free to think the thoughts you want to have. Conditioning is the opposite of an open mind. You have no conscious control over your behavior—your brain is in charge, falling back into old, deep grooves created in the past.

The joy of awareness is that you can escape any limitation imposed on you. Don’t try to find out where these limitations came from. The point is that your brain has accepted them. So the first step is to open a space where you—the user of the brain—can say no to the old pathways and start to build new ones.

When your brain is conditioned, it automatically sends the same thoughts to you over and over. Unless you step in with a new thought, the old pathways get reinforced. It’s not hard to step in. You just have to make it a priority, backed up with a commitment to be free. Consider this a kind of replacement therapy.

Here are some typical thoughts dictated by poor body image, frustration, and bad habits. If you have such thoughts, stop and replace them as soon as they occur. Repeat the replacement thought several times until it sinks in. If the new thought feels uncomfortable or raises certain emotions, sit quietly with your eyes shut and let the reaction pass. Don’t fight it. Just observe what’s going on. When you feel centered again, repeat the new thought one more time.

Notice that you aren’t simply taking negativity and changing it to positivity. That can work for a while, but at a certain point you lose motivation—negativity is triggered every time you look in the mirror or watch other people do things you can’t do. This action step is about
giving your brain reasons to change.
The higher brain is in charge of rational choices and behavior. If you keep feeding it with new thoughts that contain rational solutions, these new thoughts will start to become imprinted as “my way of doing things.” It’s all part of changing your perception so that reality—meaning your personal reality—will change at the same time.

Conscious Versus Unconscious

Your whole lifestyle is shaped by how conscious you are. Every choice traces back to the mind. Many problems are rooted in the blanking out, denial, numbness, and conditioning that we’ve been discussing in this chapter. What lies ahead is a brighter vision, and in this vision you are leading a conscious life. It takes a conscious lifestyle to get there, and I’ve been showing you how to lead one, where your higher brain is freed from lower-brain impulses, drives, and cravings.

If you stand back from your present lifestyle, with all its positive and negative aspects, you will see that the appeal of being unconscious is strong—people wouldn’t go into denial and run after distractions if it wasn’t. At the same time, the appeal of being conscious is also real, even though society doesn’t teach us that this is true. Mass advertising, not just for junk food but for every kind of consumer good, tries to make impulsiveness look exciting. The answer
to everything is to consume more and more, as if masking pain with pleasure is the right solution.

It’s really helpful to look at reality, showing what actually happens if you adopt a conscious lifestyle versus an unconscious one.

Unconscious Lifestyle

When you are unconscious, your life story isn’t under your control. You’re a brain puppet, which means that your choices aren’t really your own. They are mechanical repetitions of past choices. You give in to momentary impulses. You make hasty decisions and regret them later. Unintended consequences seem to rise out of the ground like weeds. People who lead an unconscious lifestyle can’t realistically solve their problems. They are prone to the following thoughts:

Why is this happening to me?

Why can’t I get anything done?

Why do I feel so overwhelmed?

Somebody has to help me.

I’m out of control.

These are not pleasant thoughts, and they can easily lead to panic. Yet we all go unconscious under certain circumstances. In the face of heavy stress, we shut down from sheer exhaustion. Unable to solve a difficult personal issue, we resign ourselves to it. A mind-body process is at work, the natural instinct to avoid pain. An unconscious lifestyle detaches you from tough situations. In the short run this feels like a relief—your sensitivity to pain is lessened.

But in the long run, being unconscious involves too much avoidance. The negativity you are trying to shut out isn’t resolved. Bad things continue to happen, and they increase, because when you don’t develop good coping skills, you can’t solve your problems. If
you have gotten in the habit of being unconscious, you will procrastinate and keep putting off important decisions. You are likely to be forgetful and indecisive. It will be hard to speak your truth because you aren’t really sure who you are.

Impulsiveness

Depression

Anxiety

Restlessness

Victimization

Helplessness

Being Conscious

When you are conscious, you have control over your impulses. Your brain hasn’t turned you into its puppet. Instead, you use the brain as the mind’s magnificent gift. It turns your intentions into reality, makes dreams come true, and delivers a stream of creativity. The higher brain is mined for its resources of intelligence and evolution. When you lead a conscious lifestyle, you can make rational decisions, which gives you the power to shape your future. Unforeseen consequences are much less, and when they arise, you trust that you can find a solution. You are not fortune’s fool.

To be conscious is to know how to deal with unpredictability and uncertainty. Experience has taught you that uncertainty has its own wisdom—without it, life would be boringly predictable. So surf the wave of uncertainty; instead of going under, be alert and responsive to the changing situations in your life. When you lead a conscious lifestyle, a snapshot of your mind would include thoughts like the following:

I need to plan ahead.

I’m in control.

What’s my best choice in this situation?

Are things working out the way they should?

Let me think about this for a while. I need time to consider.

I know what I’m doing.

These are considered thoughts that bring reassurance. The more conscious you are, the more you feel in charge—you are writing a proud, satisfying story. No one is writing it for you, and if they try, you will go to considerable lengths to reclaim your rights. Consciousness is also associated with mastering a skill. Mastery requires the ability to remember and learn from our mistakes, to have patience with the learning curve, and to postpone immediate results for long-term gains. Consciousness opens the way for success in meeting life’s challenges.

Awakeness

Alertness

Interest

Curiosity

A Settled Feeling

Assuredness

Openness

Flexibility

One reason we’ve been focusing on themes is that unlike simple advice, a theme is something you can take hold of and be creative with. Bringing any of them into your life—whether it’s lightness, purity, energy, or balance—brings you out of an unconscious lifestyle
into a conscious one. Getting to our ideal weight is important, but to be honest, scanning the many books on diet, nutrition, and weight control, even the most reliable (which are in a slim minority) don’t change a person’s life as much as they promise to. Only awareness can do that.

When you achieve a conscious lifestyle, you will celebrate your whole existence. Keep that in mind every day. Make it your vision, and shape all your choices around it. Here’s a version of my own personal vision. It’s a manifesto, which grew out of the right to be aware. Adopt it; personalize it. When you feel that you’ve lost focus, take out your manifesto and reinforce it as much as you can.

I expect my body to project what I want.

I want to be at my ideal weight.

I want to feel light, energetic, and joyful.

I want to be pain free.

I want to feel good about how my body looks.

I want to be rested and centered.

I want to be in a state of well-being.

Your old conditioning is preventing you from living your manifesto today in all its fulfillment. But nothing can stop you from having a vision, and once you pursue it, life expands its possibilities as your awareness expands. The world’s wisdom traditions have made this promise for thousands of years, and countless people have found fulfillment on the path you are now walking.

Making It Personal:
“How Am I Doing?”

All actions begin in the mind, so learning to direct your mind is a prerequisite for any type of change. I find a lot of truth in the saying, “You are only as safe as your thoughts.” If your thoughts are about temptation, not giving in, irresistible cravings, and being powerless to control your weight, you don’t feel safe. How much you weigh isn’t the key here. The key is staying in weight-loss awareness. We can break weight-loss awareness down into the following:

Not fighting against yourself

Ignoring calorie counting

Giving up diet foods

Eating natural foods

Knowing how hungry you are

Restoring balance where it matters

Dealing with things that bring you out of balance

Focusing on reaching your desired goal of ideal weight

Finding satisfaction without overeating

When someone is firmly in weight-loss awareness, they are walking the path—no matter what you do at the level of action, all paths are actually in awareness, the place where all beliefs, hopes, wishes, dreams, and fears get activated.

Today, take a few moments in the morning to review your state of mind. Rate yourself on each element of weight-loss awareness from 1 to 5:

5. I’ve got this down—I’m proud of where I am.

4. I’m doing okay.

3. I need to pay more attention.

2. I’ve slipped up—I need to really focus.

1. Uh-oh, I completely forgot this.

Take the item that you most want to change, and during your day make mental space to work on it. Your aim is to offer your brain a simple reminder. With repetition, this turns into a powerful tool for retraining your brain.

At the same time, take note of where you are succeeding. Appreciate how well you are doing. Really identify with your positive state of awareness—it’s the thing that is going to change your life.