Sick of Being Stuck?

I went to the beach in Newport Beach yesterday at 28th Street. Growing up, I was more of a dare devil and didn't care how cold the water was. I would just run and jump in. Nowadays, I take my time, refusing to go in sometimes if it's too cold. When I was younger, I vowed I'd never turn out like that. I vowed I'd go in the water every time I went to the beach, not turning into one of those "old moms" that was afraid of the water. Well guess what? I had turned into one of those old moms, until yesterday when something strange happened.

As I was tiptoeing into the water, a little bit of that old dare devil thinking sparked inside my head and I felt like running into the water and throwing my fears to the wind. So I did. And I LOVED it.

So what do 65 degree water and overeating have in common? Our reactions to both of them are affected by what labels we give ourselves. I had stamped the "I'm an old mom who doesn't like cold water and stays on the sand" label on my forehead. It became my identity for a while and I was comfortable believing it and playing that role, feeling it was somehow out of my hands.

Likewise, labels we give ourselves after we overeat can give us a certain self-identity or role to play and affects our actions. For example, if the last three times you have eaten doughnuts you have eaten too much and gotten a bellyache, you may label yourself as someone who can't help but overeat around doughnuts. So the next time doughnuts are in front of your face, you are expecting yourself to eat too much. You may even joke about it. Since you are believing your role as a doughnut overeater, you expect yourself to cave time and again. And you will until you can figure out how to peel that label off your forehead and replace it with a new more empowering one.

Make sense? I elaborate more on this in my book, which is for sale on Amazon for $12.99 for one more week. After that, it goes up to $14.99.

So take a second and identify one of the roles you have given yourself that you don't really like or that doesn't really serve you. What is it? How does it hold you back? What would you like to replace it with?