Your actions and reactions in the outside world depend on what you believe about yourself to be true. They depend on how you see yourself, or how you perceive yourself to be.
You can get a good idea of how you perceive yourself to be, then, by watching your actions and reactions. See yourself as someone who is forgiving and compassionate and this will be your reaction. Or more accurately, if you respond to an unpleasant situation with forgiveness and compassion, you can draw the conclusion that how you see yourself is as someone who is forgiving and compassionate.
So, understanding this means you can kind of, bend reality, by altering your actions and reactions in order to change your perception of yourself.
Now, most people, when they try to change their life, work forwards (affirmations are a tool that springs to mind). They try to change themselves first so that they can go on to change their actions and reactions in the outside world. But it’s much quicker and more effective to work backwards. You change your actions and reactions first, which inevitably changes your perception of yourself which then makes it easy to act and react in the way that you want.
In other words, act and react in the way of your ideal self, and you’ll inevitably begin to perceive yourself as that person and shortly thereafter become that person. You’ll effortlessly walk forward into the life of your ideal self. Which I guess is a long winded way of saying what that hackneyed phrase, “fake it ‘til you make it” manages to convey in five and a half words.
So, the magic formula for becoming indifferent towards junk food (AKA choosing the salad over fries), can therefore be summed up like this:
Actions and reactions of indifference towards junk food MINUS any feelings that suggest otherwise EQUALS feelings of indifference towards junk food.
Which is practical terms can be summed up with one action step:
Whenever you feel those tell tale urges or longings for junk food, whenever you feel your mouth filling with saliva at the thought of fries instead of salad, reach instead, with your mind, for feelings of indifference towards those fries. Make it a habit.
In no time at all you’ll be living the life of someone who IS indifferent towards fries (and therefore fully capable of choosing the salad). You’ll have bent reality, working backwards, altering your perception of yourself from someone who can’t say no to fries to someone who can take them or leave them. You’ll have forcibly changed your actions and reactions until your perception of yourself changed so that you were able to achieve the salad eating outcome you desired.
Fake it ‘til you make it is a cliche, but cliches are so called for a reason.
As it turns out, that reason? Is truth.
My magic journal: The Blubber Bandit is finally here! Grab a copy here (it’ll make you thin – no I’m not joking).