Retreat: Go within for lasting change.

Retreat

What life lesson or lessons do you keep repeating? Do you keep dating the same kind of person, whether he or she is emotionally absent or abusive towards you? Are you always dieting, or dealing with the ups and downs of weight loss and weight gain, never really having long lasting change? Are you struggling with healthy eating versus and being on a diet? Healthy eating is a lifestyle instead of limiting yourself from foods for a certain amount of time. Are you struggling with quitting smoking, checking your blood sugars consistently, or any other desired goal?

If we keep doing something repeatedly, despite knowing that the behavior is not helping us and instead is causing more harm, we need to retreat inside to get to the root cause of our behavior. Until we get to the root cause of our behavior, we will keep repeating the same behavior and/or pick up other negative behaviors.

Some things to consider:

1. Become more aware of your behavior. Spend time with yourself (i.e. meditation) and/or ask loved ones what they notice about your behavior (consequences of your behavior, when you do it, where you do it, and any other cues). Note the when, where, how you do something, and eventually the why will surface as you start seeing a pattern in your behavior. I believe that when we are truthful with ourselves and ask the right questions, we will eventually get the right answers.

2. Identify and be real about what type of help you will need to master yourself and diminishing unhealthy behaviors.

3. Be patient with yourself. Changing a behavior is a process. You did not pick up the behavior overnight.

4. Work on one behavior at a time. Sometimes we get so excited by change and get caught up in the emotions, we want to tackle anything and everything.

5. Positively reward yourself throughout the process. Be creative in your reward and decrease your temptation to go back to negative behavior (read a book, find a mentor, join a support group, find and cook a healthy recipe, etc.)

Heal within,

Timika