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- What does your heart long for?
This podcast episode comes from Session 11 of the Heal Overeating: Untangled program. Karly speaks about the nature of our thoughts, and offers a tool for living in greater alignment with our personal truths.
“One of the challenges of being a human being is that we are bombarded by thoughts; they swim in our minds and they can lead directly to behaviors that are counter to how we want to be in the world.
That is the key right there: how do we want to be in the world? What is our heart most longing for?
When we’re looking at changing a pattern of how we eat or how we care for our body, on the surface, there can be some vanity, there can be a desire for some control, there can be a desire for just ease, for it not to be such a constant craw that just rubs us the wrong way and causes so much pain in our lives.
Yet below that, below those things, a desire for a slimmer body or a desire not to be so consumed about thoughts about what to eat or what not to eat, there is the deepest longing of the heart and that is love. That is being present to our lives. That’s wonder, reverence, care.
If we’re living in a way that’s contrary to those things, it feels uncomfortable, it feels dissident.
The reason it feels dissident is because it’s not who we really are. It’s not about blaming ourselves, feeling guilty, feeling bad or calling ourselves bad because we’re living this way. No, it’s just contrary to our true nature. We feel like a fish out of water. There is a natural longing in us to come home. That’s what this entire course of Untangled. What it is doing is helping you connect to that deepest aspiration in your heart.
As we turn and look in this session to our thoughts and see how our thoughts are either contributing to that aspiration, whether it’s leading us towards who we really are or whether it’s leading us away from that, I’m going to encourage you to be very, very gentle and very, very kind.
Thoughts are thoughts, we all have them. I love what Byron Katie says, she says, ‘There are new thoughts, they’re all recycled.’ Every thought that you hold in your mind is something I’ve held in my mind, is something that the person that lives next door to you has thought, the woman who you think has never had any food issues in her life; she’s had those same thoughts. They’re not personal.
Don’t take this exploration of your thoughts personally when you realize, ‘Wow. I’ve been really hooking onto some defeating thoughts or some defeating beliefs.’ Don’t use it as ammunition to wound yourself.
That’s the shadow where we recognize, ‘I’m contributing to some of my own suffering here,’ and we turn on ourselves because of it. It just is. It has to do with how our brains are wired, it has to do with the fact all of us want pleasure and want to avoid pain. Of course, we are going to want to try to do things with our thinking or various things to go on a path that we think is going to help us achieve that end goal.
Please, just approach this work with gentleness and compassion. The thoughts and beliefs that you carry around in your mind are just in the air that all of us breathe, which is why all of us can pick up on them.”
Wanting more hands on help:
- Do the opposite of what your shame tells you to do.
- How accepting yourself makes change possible.
- This month we’re exploring the theme of “healing through love” on Firstourselves.org. If you want to learn how you can heal the roots of overeating through love, I invite you to explore the Heal Overeating: Untangled program. This audio and workbook program is my most popular program, and can help you heal your relationship with food and your sweet self. If it feels right to you, I encourage you to experience the healing in this program for yourself. Sign up for a free mini course, an introduction to Untangled, here.
We invite you to share your feedback for this podcast, and to ask questions for future podcasts by calling 1-888-297-7076 or emailing help@firstourselves.org
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