Do you think thoughts that sound something like: “I’ll be happy when I lose this weight.”
Many of us think happiness is reserved for after success–after the success of weight loss. We define success as a certain number on the scale. And we reserve happiness to be available only after that number is seen.
Success does not equal happiness. In fact, how you feel on the way to success is often how you feel when you arrive there. Whether success is defined as a weight goal, a money goal or some other life goal.
Being a certain weight actually has nothing to do with happiness. One is gravity and the other is an emotion you have. Weight loss success cannot make you happy.
Weight loss gets a bad rap because people try to do it for happiness. They have somehow gotten the message that if they were thinner they would be happier. They have decided that they are unhappy, or even I notice describe themselves as depressed because of their weight. They believe that if they were able to lose the weight, the depression would go away and they would be happy. But happiness is caused by your thinking. You can be overweight and happy and you can be thin and happy. You can also be overweight and miserable and thin and miserable. I’ll repeat the above:
How you feel on the way to success is often how you feel when you arrive there.
If you lose weight feeling miserable the majority of the time, you will still feel miserable when you get to “that number.” You bring your brain along with you. If you lose weight feeling amazing the majority of the time, you will still feel amazing when you get there–mostly because you’ve learned the skill of feeling amazing!
When people say “I don’t want to lose weight, I just want to be happy with where I’m at,” it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like saying I don’t want to be strong I’d rather be smart.
The truth is, happiness is an emotion that comes and goes. We don’t really want to be happy all the time. It’s not even a worthy goal. Happiness is an emotion caused by what you are thinking. Our emotions are 50/50–about 50% of the time we feel positive emotions and about 50% of the time we feel negative emotions. That’s literally just how the world and the human experience works. It’s how it’s supposed to work.
You will feel happiness along the way to success and you will feel frustration. You will feel joy and you will feel discouragement. You will feel deprivation and you will feel abundance. AND you will continue to feel these emotions after you are “successful,” or after you achieve your goal weight. Because you are a human having a human experience!
You don’t have to wait to be a certain scale weight to feel happiness. And you certainly don’t have to give up on losing weight in order to feel happiness.
Weight loss success can’t solve a happiness problem. You get to be happy all along the way. It’s about managing your mind, making conscious choices about the thoughts you think and the way you speak to yourself.
You can work toward happiness and weight loss at the same time in a conscious and purposeful way.
Wondering how that’s possible? Schedule a strategy session with me and I’ll show you.
