Do you have permission to be attractive?
Ok, so you are committed to losing weight, gaining fitness and improving your overall health, but have you checked in to see if you have permission to be attractive first?
Wait, what? Permission?
Permission from who?
Well, yourself of course, the only permission that really matters as an adult.
Despite what you may have understood about the apparent virtues of self-discipline and your ability to just make yourself do what you must, if you do not have a resounding yes to this question, then you’ll find all kinds of internal resistance, self-sabotage and inner conflict thwarting your stated health goals.
The great misunderstanding
Although self-discipline is culturally celebrated as the most important resource for successful humans, it is also the only tool in the shed for most people. Having a bunch of ultra-masculine, ex-military, hard arses preaching self-discipline or die, is only making it harder for the average person to genuinely improve their life.
The underpinning logic of self-discipline is that there is an inherently unmotivated, lazy, weak, or bad part of you that will ruin everything if given half a chance. This belief makes it impossible to rest. If you snooze, you lose. If you are not driving things forward, you are being sucked backwards.
The worst part of the self-discipline strategy is that due to this presupposition about your corrupt nature you must use your best energy against yourself to stay in the game. Parts of you are now at war. War means one side is winning while the other side is losing with inevitable collateral damage for both parties. Therefore, self-discipline is incredibly inefficient. It is a young person's game because it requires you to have energy to waste.
Self-discipline works when you are young because you have an abundance of energy. You have more than you need. You can afford to be wasteful. You can get away with system inefficiencies. You can steal from Peter to pay Paul and get away with it. However, as you enter the mid-life season, you’ll notice you no longer have energy to waste which means you must learn to be much more efficient.
Mid-life success always comes from optimisation and increasing the efficiency of your system. The logic demands that working with yourself instead must be a better way. In fact, until you understand exactly how to do this, the adversarial internal relationship will lead to sabotage and your goals will always be blocked.
The mid-life pinch point
The motivation and performance problem you are trying to solve is not due to a lack of discipline. In fact, at this point, more discipline does more damage than good. Your real problem is a lack of permission – from yourself.
The safety officer
Another way of conceptualising what is going on, is to imagine your unconscious mind is like the safety officer in charge of workplace health and safety and has stepped on site to demand all work to stop. Clipboard in hand, there is a list of severe safety breaches requiring urgent attention before production can resume. While it may appear that you are being thwarted by your inner ‘bitch’ who hates the idea of things going well for you, considering the importance of safety in your life will give you cause to reconsider.
Whether you like it or not, every cell in your body is hardwired for self-protection. When in danger (real or perceived) we instinctively activate full defence protocols as part of the nervous system’s flight / fight response. We only protect that which we value, so self-preservation is evidence of genuine self-love. The safety officer is your friend. They want productivity and success as much as every other part of you, it’s just that your operations must be safe. You can’t just turn off your need for safety.
Permission denied
The central dilemma you now face is that whether you like it or not, you do NOT have permission from yourself to move forward in life under these current arrangements. As a result, all progress and production is being actively resisted. The handbrake is firmly on and no matter how hard you try to forge on, you cannot. This is not because there is anything wrong with you, it is simply a loving restriction from your unconscious mind because certain aspects of your current set up are not safe.
More courage and less fear is yesterday's game. That logic may work while you are young, but good luck running that strategy now your unconscious has found its voice.
If you were to have permission to fully show up and maximise your energy and focus without addressing the safety concerns, that would be reckless and lead to certain calamity. However, once you address the necessary requirements to make your life safe again, then the handbrake is released, and you are free to power-up!
What could be dangerous about being attractive?
To be attractive is to be seen. The more people looking at you, the more chance there is of being examined, judged, criticised, and ultimately found out.
To be healthy, fit, and attractive is to lose the layer of insulation from being seen. You are now exposed. Your perceived inadequacies are now on show. What if you show up at your best, and your best still isn’t enough? There is no way of justifying this failure other than to take it personally. If you are rejected when you are overweight, at least you can rationalise that it was the unhealthy you that was not enough because the real you still wasn’t seen.
As strange as it may sound, can you now see that being overweight, unfit or unattractive protects you from being exposed of being found out?
To solve the health problem, you’ll have to solve the insecurity problem first.
The only logical way out of this dilemma therefore is to deal with the underlying insecurity that perhaps you are not good at all. That some darkness, badness, or wrongness lurks within.
This fear is universal to all. It is the human condition.
We all deeply desire to be seen as, and thought of, as good. The problem is that we fear if we are fully scrutinised, exposed, or laid bare, the inherent flaws in our nature would be clear for all to see and it would be proven that we are not good at all. This is the heart of insecurity. The fear that our worst opinion of ourselves would be confirmed by the world.
Now, I understand that what seemed like a simple diet and exercise problem a minute ago, now has been blown out to a permission and insecurity problem, but better to be clear about what you are dealing with then to be constantly frustrated by your inability to force your way forward.
Your success must be safe
If it is evidently dangerous to be attractive under your current belief system, then it is simply not safe to lose weight, gain health and start looking good.
You cannot simply turn off your need for safety or override the natural order by forcing your way forward with courage and discipline. Your unconscious mind controls at least 90% of bodily functions and so without permission to be attractive, you will not ever win against yourself if you choose to fight the rules.
The only true solution must be a peaceful one.
If you are willing to scrutinise your own assumptions about your apparent lack of goodness due to painful, embarrassing or shameful moments of your past – you will always have misunderstood your own behaviour and the underlying intentions of why it is you did the things that caused you to assume the worst.
Until you discover your own inherent goodness separate from anything you need to do, say, have, or achieve, you will always be looking for a way to prove or defend your goodness externally.
Once you know that you are already a good person and completely own this knowledge internally, then you are free to fully show up
Secure people are always attractive. Why wouldn’t they be. They are free to shine, glow, love, give, contribute, and play. Their sense of self is no longer dependant on arbitrary rules, so no matter what happens when they show up, their goodness is never in dispute.
If you want to lose weight, gain health and be happy in your own skin, you must first change your mind about what you’ve assumed is wrong with you that has caused you to run and hide up until now.
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For a complete explanation of how to overcome all insecurity and therefore make it safe to fully show up to life with nothing to hide, and have permission to be healthy and attractive, dive into my latest book “The Self-Permission Method - How To Succeed in Life Without Using Self Discipline.”