guest post: Fulfillment on a Full Plate

guest post by the lovely, Laura Maphis

“When we are hungry for something to make us feel good about ourselves and we refuse to take care of our inner needs, we do stupid things”  
Debbie Ford

I have a feeling that most of us can relate to this statement. At the risk of sounding miserable and melodramatic (I’m not!), I can tell you that I have spent the majority of my adult life thus far eating efficiently rather than nutritiously; exercising my mind to the point of emaciation (2 words- graduate school) while ignoring my body’s need for exercise; keeping late hours; and denying myself much flexibility for breathing, creating, and being. I relied on caffeine and nicotine to get me through. Eight years and a Masters degree in clinical HEALTH psychology later (oh, the irony), it dawned on me that our vices- not the type necessarily but their mere presence and the frequency in which we employ them- might be telling us something. Maybe certain things in our realities are amiss, or our realities are not aligned with how we envisioned our reality being, and as a result, we feel badly.

            People handle negative emotions in a variety of ways. We may quickly react in an effort to make the bad feelings go away (think how little time elapses between an itch and a scratch) or we may over-indulge those negative feelings and let them take hold of us (e.g., listen to sad music, not dress ourselves for the day because we don’t want to face it).  For either of these scenarios, the recourse may be turning to our vices- whether that means having 1, 2, 10 drinks too many, eating a gallon of ice cream, smoking, emotional wallowing- the list continues and varies from person to person. So you have found yourself turning to your vices more often lately. Is this solution to change your reality? Maybe. Perhaps, though, for the sake of parsimony and those life circumstances that are more “fixed” than others, it’s more practical to change the way we find fulfillment in our current realities. Take a pre-emptive stance- don’t wait for when you are feeling badly to practice self-care.

Self-care involves TLC of mind, body, and soul. Since my 26^th birthday, I have worked to increase my self-care and sense of personal fulfillment within the bounds of my current reality- a reality filled with late nights, mental exhaustion, performance anxiety, and high personal and professional standards. One of the biggest changes that I made involved my relationship with food. Changing how I viewed, consumed, and even felt about food helped me to better take care of myself and thus better my reality. As a result, I physically feel healthier. Cooking, cleaning (really, cleaning!), and, in particular, grocery shopping, have become akin to praying. While in the kitchen, I am listening for the rolling boil of water on the stove, sniffing for the first hint of olfactory pleasure, admiring the colors and compositions on my plate, and both challenging and pleasuring my palate. I am able remain in the present moment. Moreover, my new-found confidence has allowed for crazy culinary undertakings (grilled rare ahi tuna with a cilantro wasabi aioli created by yours truly!). My creativity, too, as I am pleased to report, sprung forth from its underground well. Like Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project” said, “I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen.”  What Gretchen means is that we don’t necessarily need a huge life-overhaul to move our current realities closer to our ideal realities.

Through research and personal experiences:

1.      You don’t have to give yourself a life makeover. In fact, too many changes in too short a time can set folks up to fail, and people end up abandoning all of the changes they initially set out to make. Start small.

2.      How do I start small? You start by listing changes you want to make for yourself (what do I want to stop? Or, what do I want to start?), then you have an honest conversation with yourself. Try this method once you have generated areas for change/growth: on a scale of 0-100 (100 being 100%), how likely are you to actually initiate and follow-through with a particular behavior? Ask yourself the following questions to help you hone what you want to work on. What has kept you from quitting X or starting X prior to now? What do you foresee getting in the way of your success (e.g., lack of time, the people you surround yourself with, financial cost)? What would you be willing to do in order to make your change more successful (e.g., get up an hour earlier, pay for a baby-sitter once a week)?  You must choose manageable goals. This is crucial. Lofty goals with improper self-assessment (i.e., Am I ready to do this?) can hurt your belief in your ability to achieve goals.

3.      If the thought of self-care is daunting, change the way you think about it. So you have a lot on your “plate,” and adding something to it is daunting. And your metaphorical life “plate” is full of cafeteria-grade food. Though your plate may feel a little more crammed, self-care is the decadent dessert that will overshadow the cafeteria-grade food and will transform your overall plate to something much more palatable.

4.      Accountability! It is super helpful to monitor your changes (e.g., writing down what you did in your planner, checking-in with a supportive other). Telling you about the changes I am making helps me remain accountable for them!

5.      With the aforementioned said, don’t take your own rules for change too, too seriously. You don’t want to overly frustrate yourself for trying. In our realities, sometimes we have to sacrifice self-care in order to take care of ourselves. That is, sometimes I have to skip the gym in order to get to bed at a decent time when homework still awaits me.

My advice has been for bigger changes, such as those you would learn to integrate into your routine. Don’t underestimate the little things you can do to bless yourself and your circumstances daily, though. Paying particular attention to the colors of a sultry sunset, taking a few moments to breathe, letting a fond memory linger a little longer, reciting your favorite poem in your mind as you wait for the grocery store check-out—self-care can be as simple as taking small opportunities to reconnect to your inner life. According to Debbie Ford’s logic, we will all be a little smarter for it!