The Awakening

Know how it feels when something hits you upside the head?  That’s how I felt reading an excerpt from Geneen Roth’s newest book, Women, Food and God.

Roth first made me blink by asserting that if we wish to change a behavior in ourselves, we need to realize that what we perceive as a wall, is really a door.  Open it, look inside, and we’ll find not the addiction, but the feelings we’re trying to suppress by filling ourselves up with our intoxicant of choice, whether it be food, drink, drugs, gambling, toxic relationships, the internet—you get the picture. 

So today when I begin thinking about what I want to eat and I’m not really hungry, instead of mindlessly popping something into my mouth for a quick fix, I’m going to be present to the moment, open my heart and yes, that door to discover what is eating me.  As Roth says, “we don’t want to eat the hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to be the hot fudge sundaes.”  Imagine that—a hot fudge sundae life!

Oh, and I already ordered the book.

“You do anything long enough to escape the habit of living until the escape becomes the habit” –David Ryan, English soccer player

”I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you.  When your whole life breaks down.  That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.”—Chuck Palahniuk, American novelist and journalist

”How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”—Annie Dillard, American writer.

Wake up and be present to your life and yourself today, if only for a few minutes. Then tomorrow, do it again for a few minutes more.

Enjoy your day!