Imagine you went to your pantry, grabbed the chocolate bar, opened it and finished it immediately. Those moments are one of the big causes of overweight. It can be worse. Others take their car key, head to the gas station in the middle of the night, buy chips and chocolate and finish everything the same night. Some women want to bake a cake, but instead of putting the dough into the oven, they finish the raw dough before they bake it. One of the worst cases is, when people take a huge load of sweets every single evening with them to bed and finish that load while watching TV.
There are nutritional reasons for cravings and I have a course „Wisdom of food providing“ that teaches those reasons and how to avoid them.
But something else has be considered and I want to write about it.
I believe those binge eating attacks are failures. Nikola Tesla said: „Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.“
So does that mean we can’t prevent ourselves from making mistakes and protect ourselves from the mistakes of others? Yes, it means just that. It’s impossible to try to not make mistakes and to expect other people to make no mistakes.
And mistakes make us grow, right? There are just so many inspirational quotes like: „Mistakes make us human. Failure helps us grow. Hope keeps us going.“ But how does that work? How do our mistakes actually make us grow?
Here are my 6 steps:
Step 1: You realize you made a mistake.
e.g.: After you finished the chocolate bar you feel bad. You know you shouldn’t have done that.
Step 2: You realize there is no way to correct that mistake.
e.g.: You can’t run to the gym and try to get rid of the extra kcal by hitting the treadmill.
Step 3: You analyze the situation and circumstances that triggered that mistake.
e.g.: You realize you were stressed, sad, tired, hungry, frustrated, somebody said something to you, you didn’t get what you wanted or you lost something and eating the chocolate just felt so comforting and good.
Step 4: You realize what a bad person you are. You realize there is a devil in you.
e.g.: You can’t help others nor yourself if you harm your own body. So taking care of your body first should be your priority and you just hurt yourself with that chocolate. You’ve been bad to yourself.
Step 5: You decide to not do it again.
e.g.: The next time you find yourself in a triggering situation you are not going to eat a chocolate bar.
These 5 steps make you grow. They are not easy because you have to realize what you’ve done and you have to live with the shame and guilt. And I promise you, stopping here will make you do that mistake again. You can decide as often as you want to not do that mistake again. The ultimate and most difficult step is:
Step 6: You don’t make that mistake in a triggering situation and you do something right.
e.g.: You close your pantry and either make yourself some real meal or eat nothing and step away.
If you’re capable of doing so you rise above yourself. You become a better person.
I believe those steps are universal for all mistakes we make in life. We may not be able to make no mistakes at all but we are able not do them again.
The moment we realize what we’ve done we are able to apologize. Because it doesn’t matter what others think of us. It only matters what we’ve done and whom we hurt. The mistakes we make are always our faults never anybody else’s. And therefore I believe the ultimate punishment is when we realize what we’ve done.
I hope my words got you thinking and they initiate change for you.