After much waivering and uncertainty I wrote to the weight loss coach to ask if there was another way of working other than setting goals. Goals to me are like diets – as soon as you make them you break them. They set me up for failure, disappointment and self loathing.
In her response she basically told me that I wasn’t ready to commit, that what I believe is what I get, that I’m perhaps frightened of succeeding. And she asked me how I could live without goals. But I didn’t feel that she wanted to know my answer, because she can’t believe anything other than what she believes in! Yet she wants me to just drop my own beliefs …
I don’t believe in goals because the means don’t justify the end. They make me use effort and force to try and grasp what I think I want rather than ask Life what it wants from me (actually it tells me anyway!).
But most importantly they take me out of the moment. Instead of being present to what is, my mind goes into overdrive about what could be. My imagination … well … imagines… what life would be like if I was anywhere but here, now. I am pulled out of what is arising now, I lose connection with my body and my senses (quite literally I become senseless – which is a funny phrase because it is usually used in connection with the mind when it is everything other than that!).
But something is still drawing me. Curiosity? Desperation? Wanting to be right? Proof that I can’t be helped, that there is something seriously wrong with me?
It is at points like this that I become very confused and doubt my own knowing. My mind and body both say a big fat NO to going. But her words are like a screwdriver prising open the paint pot lid and letting in dust and dirt into the purity of the swirling colours. OK so that was a bit too poetic, but that’s what it feels like. Why am I going against what I know to be true for me? Perhaps it isn’t my knowing, perhaps my ego is so gigantic that it needs to be brought down a peg or two…. I now feel that I know nothing and I can’t trust my own thoughts, feelings, sensations….
Is this two steps forward, three steps back? Or is this some sort of dark night of the soul where I address my subconscious fears and after much kicking and screaming come out the other end happier and more fulfilled?
I doubt the latter, but we shall see …
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