Welcome to Part 3 of the series on Building a New Relationship with Food. (You can find Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE)

As part of the process of reclaiming your freedom around food, let’s look at one of the key principles: Step aside from the diet mentality.
Everyone has intuitive guidance in all aspects of their life all the time. There is nothing special about having it around food….it is just part of how we’re set up. In order to be in touch with your internal guidance around food you need to make yourself available to it.

​This means stepping away from externally dictated, conflicting, fear-inducing rules that live in your mind and manage your relationship with food. Here are 4 way that you can start to do that:

I  was looking through some quotes the other day and I ran across one that said something like:
Be good to yourself. Forgive yourself. When you treat yourself well life will treat you well.

I eyed it dubiously and then moved on to other sources.  I was bothered by it, though so I went back to re-read it.  It is an idea that I have heard many times over the last few years, expressed in a variety of ways. 

I am uneasy around it because it sounds like something the small self would grab onto, in pursuit of building a better small self.  I agree that it is important to love, forgive and be true to myself.  But I cannot do or be any of these things as long as I am attempting, from the ego, or false identity, to be more forgiving, or loving or self-accepting. ​

"The willingness to trust and follow your heart - not the reactive ego that is often interpreted to be the heart, but the heart that longs to know God - this is a tell-tale sign of whether or not one is reaching maturity".
(from The Way of Mastery)
 
This quote reminds me of the importance of distinguishing between the guidance of the ego and the guidance of Inner Wisdom.  A few years ago it became popular to speak of being "guided" to certain decisions or actions.  As I listened to my own mind, and the minds of others, it began to seem as if there was often a hefty dose of self-delusion involved.  I saw how easy it was to simply follow the dictates and compulsions of the ego, and to believe that I was following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is an aspect of the spiritualized ego.
 
Conversely, sometimes people have told me they asked for guidance and received it, but 

​Last November I realized how tired I was of my grievance-filled relationship with Christmas. For many years, feelings of resentment, anger and despair would begin to surface around November 1, right about when Christmas music started playing as I stood in line at Starbucks for my short dark roast.
The approach of Christmas has been a cue for me to find ways of spending as much time as possible alone, away from the frantic activity and busy-ness, a mini-retreat from it all.  Which would have been a wonderful experience, except that such a spiritual sounding ​idea was based on so much ill-will!  I realized, with a sense of shock, that I had the option to participate in the season, and to enjoy every moment of it,  the same as every other day of the year. This was welcome but it left me with a large gap.

​While I was working at El Cielo, our residential treatment center, I first heard the phrase “This is what Love looks like right now” used by Diederik, in response to what looked like an adverse situation.  I didn’t really know what he meant, but as he said it, I felt a sense of relief, and an acceptance in myself that had not been present the moment before.  Over the next few weeks, I saw he and other co-workers respond in the same way to apparent difficulties.  This was not yet a tool I was using, but I became more curious each time I heard it, at the sense of relief I experienced.

I was talking to someone yesterday who said to me “I’m really in the trenches lately, and I was feeling so great.  I can’t figure out what’s going on!” He said that after some time of feeling light and peaceful, he seemed to have lost the experience and life was feeling like a struggle again..  He said ”Where is the me that was so happy a few days ago?”
 
If you sometimes find yourself in a similar spot, here are 4 tools that I have found effective in helping to change direction: