How To Replace Your Cravings With Purpose & Focus
What’s up, my friends? It’s Griff Neilson, and I have a quick question for you. Do you eat more sweet treats or junk food than you care to admit? Do you have a love/hate relationship with sugar or junk food? Would you like to cut down on your sweet treats and, thereby, cut down your waistline? If so, I would invite you to stick around for the next few minutes because you are about to learn about an often-overlooked key mental element of food addiction.
If you caught my first post in this mini-series then you learned that there are two components to food/sugar addiction. The first contributor to sugar addiction is physiological and the second is psychological. In the first part of this mini-series, I discussed the common X-Factor of food addiction that is rarely addressed.
Where Focus Goes Energy Flows
The X-Factor that I’m referring to is FOCUS & PURPOSE! What I am about to say is politically incorrect, but based on my coaching observations and my OWN experiences, I would be doing you a disservice if I took the PC route just to preserve your feelings. So take a big breath, and let the truth set you free. Those who fall prey to addiction of any kind often lack a clear-cut vision of what they want to experience and express in their life. This, therefore, gives them nothing to focus on or to be passionate about! Jack Canfield writes powerfully about this subject in his masterpiece book, The Power of Focus (1), and I highly recommend it.
People of this fold are hard pressed to tell you WHY they are here on this earth and WHAT they have to contribute. Researchers Durak, Bernstein, and Gendlin have studied the power of focus in psychological therapeutic situations and have found conclusively that patients who used the power of focus healed faster than their non-focused counterparts. (2) I am the first to admit that on the surface this may seem broad and unrelated to sugar addiction, but let’s dig a little deeper.
What Is Driving You?
Let’s say for a moment that you have always wanted to be an entrepreneurial artist who both sells your paintings and teaches other artists the business side of art. In short, you have always wanted to be an artist/entrepreneur, but from the time you were a child, you heard that there was “no money in art.” Everybody in your life chimed in with their good intentions, telling you that being an entrepreneur, and especially and artist, is risky and uncertain. With these conditioned beliefs drilled into your skull, you settled for a middle-management position doing something that does not inspire you or get you up in the morning!
Ten years pass and you notice that your diet consists of processed foods and sugary treats because they are quick, convenient, and cheap. After all, you are in a hurry with many deadlines to meet, bosses to appease, and a living to be made. Life is demanding and before you know it, you have been sucked into the “whirlwind of life.” The whirlwind that you find yourself in keeps you locked into the same set of poor nutritional habits day after day. You must put in your hours, collect your paycheck, and feed you family. Being stuck in your personal whirlwind keeps you busy, and it also gives you a quasi-sense of being productive, but it is purchased with a heavy price.
Are You Passionless & In Pain?
As time wears on and the daily grind intensifies, you finally realized that you are not focused on something that you have a PASSION for! You work because you have to–not because you WANT to. In short, you are in PAIN! You have entered the “grind of life,” and you feel stressed each and every day. Why? Because you are not driving towards something that you feel passionate about. You find it nearly impossible to maintain a focus on life because you don’t have anything worth focusing on, and without focus, you settle for DISTRACTION in the form of sugary junk foods.
Are You Living With Purpose?
Now let’s change the scenario and imagine that you wake each day with a PURPOSE, or something that drives you, inspires you, and moves you to action. Let’s say that one day you get crazy and say, “Screw it!” You then resolve to be the artist that you have always wanted to be. You create a solid business plan and, all of the sudden you feel your creative juices starting to flow.
As the days go on, you notice the weirdest thing beginning to happen. You actually wake up each day with excitement and zeal because you have something worth FOCUSING on! Your life begins to take on a whole new meaning. Instead of saying, “I have to go to work for 8 hours” you are now saying, “I can’t wait to work on my dream today!”
When you live with purpose and with passion, life seems easy and enjoyable rather than hard, boring, or arduous. When you are passionate about something and you have a “WHY” in your life you can tackle any obstacle, clear any path, and solve any problem. I call this having a Crystal Clear Vision or CCV for short. Make no mistake, when you have a CCV, your desire to take care of yourself and say no to junk food is multiplied tenfold! Are you ready to get focused on what you WANT in your life, rather than what you don’t want?
Crafting Your Crystal Clear Vision
I want to give you five initial steps that you can take that will help you form your very own Crystal Clear Vision.
Step 1: Go inward and discover your WHY!
Your “WHY” is ultimately why you are here on this earth. Using our earlier hypothetical example, when you were working in middle management at a corporation that you did not care for, you were ignoring your true calling of being an artist/entrepreneur. It is only when you are honest with yourself that you will discover your true calling in life. And, by the way, if you are saying to yourself, “Well, that’s easy enough to say, but, in reality, I have been doing what I have been doing for years now, and I just don’t know if I can change,” then please know that you absolutely need to change your belief system!
Remember, your life’s calling is not just professional. Maybe your “why” is to be the very best parent, spouse, or partner that you can be. If you are honest and authentic with yourself, you will find your why. When you discover it you will know it because you will FEEL it! For example, my “why” is to help as many people as possible change their limiting beliefs so that they can live a life of health and wellness. When I deeply ponder my “why” it excites and inspires me to the point that I can physically feel it! I get goose bumps, I feel happy, and I get an infusion of passion and energy.
Let’s say, for example, that you are a hard-charging business owner who works 10-12 hours per day, and, although, you love your work, you have something in your soul that tells you that you are going overboard on the hours. You find yourself putting off your spouse and your kids because you are too tired when you come home. Something tells you that you should spend more time with them, but you suppress it. Could this be your WHY crying for some personal attention? Be honest with yourself, and you will not only discover it, you will feel it!
Step #2: Form a Crystal Clear Vision around your WHY!
Once you have isolated your “why” or “whys,” it is time to form a Crystal Clear Vision (CCV) in support of it! To use my personal example, I form my Crystal Clear Vision around my “why” of helping and influencing people. My CCV is replete with Crystal Clear images of me speaking to large audiences and inspiring them to greatness. I go into detail about who I am helping and how their lives are better as a result of my message. I can tell you without hesitation that my CCV inspires me and moves me into daily action; in fact, that is why I am writing this post right now.
It is wise to write all of your thoughts down on paper, and, if you choose, you can go a step further with a vision board, pictures, sayings, quotes, and other techniques based on your unique learning style. Be creative here, and remember that the main thing is to be SPECIFIC about what you WANT, not what you don’t want. You are literally creating a VISION around your “why.”
Step #3: Identify how your Crystal Clear Vision will make you FEEL when you are living it!
Let me ask you a question. When is the last time that you allowed yourself to really think about your limitless potential and how you will feel as a result of using it? For example, if you want to lose weight, have you ever taken a moment to sit back and imagine how it will make you FEEL when you are 5, 10, or 50 lbs. lighter? What would that do for your emotions, your demeanor, your thoughts, and your energy? What would it do for your self-esteem? How would you feel when your partner looks at you and says, “Damn babe, you’re looking hot!”
I want you to take a moment and indulge in this activity and really use your imagination. Feeling the positive emotions associated with personal change is KEY for long-term success. The average person tends to do the exact opposite! They will obsess about how hard the process of change is going to be and, as a consequence, they never take a moment to ponder just how much joy that positive change will bring into their lives. Sadly, this often derails them and change never happens.
“Feeling the positive emotions associated with personal change is KEY for long-term success. The average person tends to do the exact opposite! They will obsess about how hard the process of change is going to be and, as a consequence, they never take a moment to ponder just how much joy that positive change will bring into their lives”
Step #4: WHAT must happen to make your Crystal Clear Vision (CCV) a reality?
Here, you identify what must happen to make your CCV a reality! I am not suggesting that you go into extensive goal setting now as I will instruct you on that in a later post, but I am suggesting that you write down the general steps that you must take to make your vision into a reality. In addition, you must identify the barriers that are currently standing between you and your vision.
Step #5: Begin reading and repeating your CCV with EMOTION day and night
This exercise is designed to help you recondition your subconscious mind away filled with self-sabotaging beliefs. Did you know that ALL significant action taken in your life is BELIEF DRIVEN?
If you believe in something, you will ACT on it! This is what drives political, religious, and cultural behaviors. Behind all of your actions, you will either find an empowering or disempowering belief. Up to this point, all of the undesirable results of your life are a result of the disempowering beliefs that are likely stored in your subconscious mind.
Without challenging and changing these outdated beliefs, you will continue to get the same frustrating results that you are tired of! You may not realize that that your conditioned beliefs have become subconscious and automatic, which is a very dangerous combination.
“Behind all of your actions, you will either find an empowering or disempowering belief”
To break this vicious cycle, it is necessary to impose NEW beliefs into your conscious and subconscious mind through two key practices:
1-Emotion
&
2-Repetition
In essence, you will read your CCV with emotion, which should not be hard to do if you have crafted it around your “why.” When you read your CCV at least two times per day (in the morning shortly after you arise and before retiring for the night), you are essentially uninstalling the old self-limiting programs that are driving your undesired behavior. The more you read, the better! When you feel self-doubt coming on, pull that bad boy out and read it aloud if possible or silently if needed. In this way (and over time), you will recondition your mind with new beliefs that will serve you because you will take ACTION on them!
Well there you have it, my friends! In Part III of this mini-series, I will give you a real example of a powerful and moving CCV so that you can craft your own. In the mean time, I want you to craft a rough draft based on these 5 steps. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to find the ROOT CAUSE of your sugar/food addiction, which stems from a lack of purpose and focus in your life. Do not lie to yourself saying, “I don’t have a WHY!” We ALL have a WHY that gives us purpose, and we all can focus on that purpose when we identify it and live by it.
Enjoy the process my friends and always remember . . .
Life is Good!
References:
- Durak, G., Bernstein, R., & Gendlin, E. T. (1996, Fall/Winter). Effects of focusing training on therapy process and outcome.The Folio: A Journal for Focusing and Experiential Therapy, 15, 7–14.
- The Power of Focus Tenth Anniversary Edition: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Confidence and Certainty. Health Communications Inc. © 2011