There’s something that you need to know about discomfort that is going to change the way you feel and experience it. Today I’m going to toss you a ladder so you can climb our into a new reality where discomfort is no longer something you particularly care about, mkay? What is going to get you there is a realisation, and it’s this:
Sitting with discomfort is not only possible, it’s easy, and when you do? The discomfort of the discomfort disappears, and BONUS!! you become a more resilient person.
Now obviously I’m going to apply this to our crazy eating habits, but of course it applies throughout our lives. We can go running even though it’s raining, we can have a cold shower because the boiler is broken, we can have a weekend without booze because *dickface* forgot to buy some. We can wait on a cold train platform for a preposterously late train. We can handle it when someone we love insults us. We can cope with uncomfortable feelings, we can cope with physical discomfort, we can cope with the shitty bits of life.
And it’s in that realisation that the discomfort ups and leaves. The second you realise you can handle it all, life becomes a super fun game, with you, the superhero, virtually inviting all the crap, just so you can stick two fingers up at it, handle it, forgive it and even make lemonade out of it.
Never is this more true when applied to your food cravings. So when that tell tale sign comes on, that kind of listless yearn that you know means you want to go to the fridge and eat the leftover spaghetti from last night (even though it’s 11am and you had two pieces of toast not two hours ago), not only can you choose NOT to be frightened of it, you can choose TO pull up a chair for it and give it a glass of cocoa.
So as an example let’s say you’re standing in front of a buffet. Not one of those *go up once* jobs, but one of those ones that you can eat as much as you like from. Bone crushing desire ricochets through your body, especially when you see they’ve got sausages – SAUSAGES!! But you don’t panic, you don’t fret, you certainly don’t give in to the desire and start loading up on those bad boys like it’s your last chance. You do instead a pirouette (in your head) and welcome in the chance to roll your eyes at that feeling, thereby weakening it forever.
The moment, the literal moment you choose to roll your eyes at that feeling, knowing it can’t hurt you, the elements that made it uncomfortable and burdensome, disappear.
It’s kind of like, if you treat the feeling like a hockey mask wearing Michael Myers knife killer – that’s how it’ll treat you. The yearning will be so uncomfortable that you’ll either have to yield or refuse to yield but be so bad tempered about it, you’ll pick up the knife yourself and go on a rampage. If instead you choose to see the feeling / the yearn as a pink unicorn with fairy wings that are covered in glitter, then that’s how you’ll receive it.
You don’t have to be afraid of discomfort, you have permission to welcome into your life as a tool for sharpening up your edges, hardening your resolve and making you more resilient in an unpredictable world.
Because the truth is, as Bruce Lee said, you don’t want to pray for an easy life, you want to pray for the strength to endure a tough one”, and yes, I recognise we’re talking about resisting a piece of toast here, it’s hardly life or death, but feeling is feeling, discomfort is discomfort and if your tolerance for it is high? Then there’s little in life that can phase you.
Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash