Growing Your Inner Strengths to Transform Your Life

Now that we’ve covered the six primary inner strengths, it’s time to integrate them into the fabric of our being so we are more able to live in a space of happiness, contentment and peacefulness. Let’s examine how to use these six inner strengths to help grow out of and overcome our weaknesses. 

Growing internal strengths is work—l mean, sometimes really hard work. Growing inner strength requires self-awareness, a desire to change, and putting in effort consistently to make it happen. Let’s face it, change is hard, demanding and often painful. However, is change even more painful than living in space of discomfort, avoidance and struggle? What is the real cost to you within your life to NOT change? If you desire to transform your life, change is necessary.

Of these six inner strengths (remember that there are a whole lot of other inner strengths—these are just the primary ones that I’ve focused on over the last several posts), did any stand out to you that you’d like to build? Did you notice if each already exist within your being and how you approach your life? I know the desire to possess each of them is strong for me, however, I did notice how some of them were not as super solid within me as I applied them to myself! One of the ways that I most live within my personal authenticity is when I am practicing self care and growing on all levels. Examining these inner strengths made me come face to face with how complacent I can be with my weaknesses—which then causes me to not live within my authenticity—yikes! An opportunity to grow is exciting and scary at the same time, right? 

Spend some time examining your current life a bit. Reflect on the following thought questions and journal out your answers if you like:

• Where do you hold yourself back from your dreams?

• If you applied these inner strengths to how you approach your relationship with food, what did you notice in relation to each of the strengths and how they could help improve this relationship?

• Where do you feel the most struggle within your life?

• Where are you hiding or what are you hiding from?

• What limiting beliefs do you hold onto about yourself and/or your life?

When you allow yourself to really answer these questions, you will find valuable information about where you are ready to grow and evolve into you…only better! This is where your true self is longing to level-up, to create greater consciousness. When you do this, you first will go through the temporary discomfort of stepping out of your comfort zone. Once you pass this temporary discomfort, you are able to experience the freedom of living within the authenticity of your true self and ultimately create more comfort and pleasure.

Begin by selecting one area within yourself that you might consider to be a weakness. One of my primary weakness—as I perceive it anyway—is impatience…(my husband verified this for me.) Then determine which inner strength would help to manage that weakness and ultimately build it into an inner strength. For me, in order to help improve my impatience, I’d like to build temperance (along with all of the others!) Check within yourself and go into any areas where you might avoid noticing your perceived weakness(es). Awareness is always the first step!

Just as a reminder, the six inner strengths we’ve been exploring are:

1.    Curiosity: Allowing continued growth of knowledge and wisdom

2.    Vitality: Allowing continued growth of courage as well as mind & body wellbeing

3.    Giving and Receiving Love: Allowing continued growth of love, trust, openness and affirmation for yourself and others 

4.    Temperance: Allowing continued growth of acceptance, forgiveness & compassion

5.    Gratitude: Allowing for continued growth to release the state of wanting and desire and creating a grateful perspective that what you have is enough. This creates transcendence and deeply releases anxiety.

6.    Hope & Faith: An inner belief that all will be well without having to control your circumstances. This is the experience of surrender, which is deeply personal and spiritual.

Once you’ve selected one area that needs work (identified a weakness)—and one area to build (identified useful inner strength)—let yourself dive into it. Spend time in reflection about your perception of your weakness and how growing this particular inner strength can help to improve your internal experience and your interaction within your own life. Spend time journaling and talking to others about their perceptions of you (yes, get some—at times hard to hear—feedback!) Begin incorporating daily practices to build this particular inner strength starting today. Give yourself time. Be patient (note to self!) and allow yourself to grow with effort, determination and a focus on why you want to create this strength within.

How will you know when the inner strength has become integrated? It will become evident to you in how you communicate with yourself and others, the choices you make and how others respond to you. Leveling up your consciousness and your life is a lifelong journey and worth the effort. You always have the choice to change or remain right where you are…what will you choose?

Inner Strength Focus: Growing Hope to Heal Emotional Eating

Over the past several blogs I have been talking about building six specific inner strengths to help you create more contentment and happiness in your life—specifically related to your relationship with food. The final inner strength that I will cover here of the six inner strengths is hope. Hope is linked to faith and it’s an inner belief that all will be well without having to feel as though you need to control every aspect of your circumstances. This is an experience of surrender. Hope allows a surrendering to an inner belief and trust which is deeply personal and a spiritual endeavor.

If you attempt to control every aspect of your life, you will become exhausted. When you find the elements that are controllable and connect that to the hope and belief that all will be well, you can lean into the process of surrendering, the process of letting go. When you lean into surrendering and letting go, you create an experience of happiness, inner peace and contentment. Hope provides optimism and optimism ultimately keeps you moving forward with a positive and determined mindset.

When you apply the inner strength of hope to healing emotional eating, you are able to remain in a more positive mindset when it comes to challenges, emotions and trusting yourself—and trusting the process. Shifting from the dieting trap of restriction (and then the inevitable over eating) into a more mindful and intuitive eating space, you will need to access an inner hope and belief that you can truly free yourself from emotional eating and create a healthy and peaceful relationship with food.

Food is pleasurable and nourishing. The purpose of feeding ourselves is to remain healthy while also providing your life with pleasure that you derive from cooking, tasting, eating and even sharing a meal with others. When food becomes your primary (or only) source of pleasure—or your tool for managing stress—you may not have much hope that your life can be different. The cycle of emotional and stress eating is hard to disrupt. Change is difficult. Not changing is even harder because you remain stuck in that negative cycle. Building the inner strength of hope is a process of surrendering to the awareness that your relationship with food has derailed and needs support to get back on track. Hope keeps you connected to the possibility of change and creates effort.

To begin to build the inner strength of hope, it will be helpful to create a vision for what a peaceful relationship with food means to you. Understanding why you want this change to occur makes it even more powerful. When you have your vision established and connect with it regularly, you create an inner hope, a belief and faith in yourself that why you want what you want will allow you to put the effort into creating your vision as your reality. When you have faith in yourself you are more likely to be kind to yourself, to handle challenges and be more proactive.

To begin to connect with your vision in order to build hope as an inner strength, spend time journaling about the following questions:

·      What is your vision for your relationship with food?

·      Why do you want this vision?

·      What are the challenges you can foresee as you set forth to put your vision into action?

·      How can you stay connected to your vision?

·      What does hope mean to you?

·      What does having hope look like within your life, how might it change your current life?

·      What do you need to do to increase your faith in yourself?

Once you have your vision established, create 3-5 action steps that you can take daily or weekly to move you in the direction of living your vision. Find where you can access hope daily and build faith in yourself to take the action needed to create a peaceful relationship with food. Connect with your vision daily, fine tune your action steps regularly, bring on support like a friend, coach or therapist to help you stay the course.

When you connect with hope, you create more inner happiness, peace and contentment. Always remember that you deserve to live the life of your dreams.

Inner Strength Focus: Growing Temperance to Heal Emotional Eating

We are now halfway through deeply examining the six inner strengths that research points to living a full, happy life. I’ve been talking about how to grow these strengths in relation to the ability to create a healthy relationship with food and with your body. Just as a reminder, the first three were curiosity, vitality and giving and receiving love. The one we will examine today in relation to creating a peaceful relationship with food is temperance. Temperance is an inner resource of acceptance, forgiveness and compassion.

Growing the ability to create greater temperance as an inner strength and positive resource is not a task for the weary. It requires the ability to examine your ego’s desires, to observe your own blind spots and to let go—of a lot—mostly emotions…among other things. This is often much easier in a space of desire than in a space of putting it into practice. Our ego tends to be stubborn and likes to keep its heels dug into its neediness and beliefs about the way things should be. Letting go of some of the stuck emotions that create space for temperance to grow can be a challenge. 

When we apply temperance to an unhealthy relationship with food, it allows more ability to build acceptance that the dieting/restriction mentality that you may have been dancing with for years is damaging. When you build temperance you can forgive yourself for not treating your body in a kind manner—both through what you might have done (or still do it) with food. This could be restriction of certain foods, portions or over-doing-it with food. This also relates to the words and tone you use in your inner dialogue or even out loud about food and your body. Creating space for self-compassion is key and is often the last rung on ladder of temperance that we reach reach. So, let’s dig into this dynamic inner strength and start growing some temperance to reach a higher state of happiness and contentment within and, of course, to begin to make peace with food and with yourself. 

So, first let’s observe a scenario that represents a lack of temperance, where it’s not yet a strength, and then we’ll focus on how to develop, build and grow it over time. Without temperance we often blame others for our suffering, feel like a victim and ruminate on all of our problems over and over and over again. When you apply this to food and body image it’s a constant struggle with worrying about what to eat and then scolding yourself for your choices. Lack of temperance is making negative comments about our own body and even other peoples bodies. It’s holding onto anger and resentment about a number on a scale or a piece of cake (or maybe a few pieces of cake) that got eaten—or that you denied yourself. When we lack temperance we constantly feel like our food choices and our bodies are never going to be good enough and then feel angry about it and we end up over eating or over restricting/excessive exercise to punish ourselves—leading back into a vicious and dangerous cycle where food is the problem, food is the solution… This creates a desire to be “fixed” and we are yet again googling about the latest fad diet, exercise program or hypnosis program for weight loss…

The good news is that when temperance is instilled and nurtured as an inner strength the opposite of the above is possible (and if food/body image is not your vice or struggle you can plug in whatever your personal struggle may be to get the same end result). Acceptance is the foundation of temperance. To grow the ability to accept what is true in this moment without judgment or resistance is a serious challenge. Think about the last time you were sitting there thinking about just how content you are with everything in your life. It may not happen as often as you might like—if it has happened recently for you at all. Creating opportunities for acceptance will begin to create more peace and contentment.

The first place to begin is with offering acceptance to the present moment—just as it is. That means you accept the present moment without rejecting it, without trying to change it, and without judgment. This is mindfulness in action. When you are not in a state of acceptance you are most likely in a state of wishing for something, or in a state of wanting what you right now cannot have. This lack of acceptance for the present moment creates an experience of suffering. To apply this concept to your body image, think about this, if you are wishing for your body to look different that it currently does or for the number on the scale to be different than it is, then you are only perpetuating the experience of suffering in this moment. If you can be present with what is true and not judge it, you can make a choice. If you want something to change, how can you begin to make a series of choices that move you closer towards that change you desire? This can propel you you into action mode rather than victim/stagnancy mode/wishing and not doing anything to change your struggle mode.

Forgiveness and acceptance are interconnected. Forgiveness is the structure of temperance and can be defined like this: forgiveness is releasing the wish that the past could be been any different. Sounds a lot like acceptance, right? Forgiveness is an offering and a freeing so it incorporates acceptance and moves into letting go. When you hold onto resentment towards yourself or others you are holding onto toxic suppressed emotions that only create negative thought patterns. Forgiveness is not necessarily an easy process and generally is not a forced process but a very conscious letting go. This requires patience, knowing that it may take a good bit of time to forgive completely.

Forgiveness is a decision to let go over and over again and it can free you from the toxic emotions. If you are holding onto resentment towards yourself for your patterns with food or body image, you can practice forgiving yourself for eating a certain food. You can forgive yourself for restricting a certain food. You can forgive yourself for not starting today like you said you would, or for not getting in that workout you planned to do. When you forgive yourself you will feel more empowered to create the change you want from a place of self-compassion rather than from a place of self-loathing and resentment. When you operate out of self-compassion you allow yourself to be human and to struggle without punishing yourself for mistakes. This creates inner freedom and peace.

Practicing self-compassion is offering kindness and care towards yourself. You can free your judging thoughts, you can let go of trying to force something or control your food and get in touch with your body in a new, more intuitive way. When you do this, you create a space for understanding your process, your struggles, your low motivation and search for solutions that actually work and are driven out of kindness.

Four actions you can take, starting today to build temperance as an inner strength are:

1.    Practice mindfulness for 5 minutes and notice if you are attempting to judge or control the present moment. Can you align with what is true right now without attempting to change it?

2.    Use the affirmation: “In this moment I accept myself unconditionally” Your mind may try to immediately put conditions on your ability to accept yourself (if I was this size, if I looked this way, if I hadn’t eaten that, if I…) practice letting go of the conditions and continue stating it to yourself until you can just be with it as truth.

3.    Notice how you speak to yourself and practice forgiving yourself for anything you view as a mistake. If you find you are beating yourself up internally, stop, and say to yourself, “I forgive myself for _________________.” Notice how that feels to offer compassion and forgiveness.

4. Take action. Make a choice based on self-compassion, forgiveness and feel temperance growing within as you take action towards living in this space of acceptance.

If you practice these four elements this week, notice the impact and let me know how they work for you. Building the inner strength of temperance is a process, and not meant to be an overnight change. As you continue to grow these inner strengths and use them as internal supports to make peace with food, notice how impactful the way you interact with yourself can be. These strengths represent being and feeling strong from the inside out. When you are strong you demonstrate more resilience and more ability to be self-aware. I’d love to hear about your journey to building these inner strengths within!