It’s not the sugar you really want. You want connection. Love. A voice. Rest. The Divine. Beauty. Beloved, let yourself want what you want – and I mean what you truly want, not the cookies that are the inferior substitute.
Seek to understand why you’re eating the sugar at 7 p.m. every day. When you understand why you’re eating an ice cream sundae every night, you’re able to realize – it’s not about the sundae. It’s about the loneliness, or anger, or shame…..
As you become more self aware, you’re able to separate from the object itself – the sugar – and baby step by baby step, give yourself permission to go after what you really want. It takes courage to feel this vulnerability of needing what you need – as Mary Oliver said, to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” It takes courage and it is doable. We can change the old tapes that say we can’t give ourselves this kind of love.
We change the old tapes by feeling the anxiety and vulnerability about being honest about our needs and doing it anyway – caring for our needs with honesty, wisdom, and lovingkindness.
– from The 30 Day Lift