Motivating emotions

I wanted to talk to you guys about an insight I had today that I think needs to be shared.  In psychology we learn that the core motivating emotions are love and anger.  Yes you can be motivated by other things like fear, jealousy, greed and other emotions but the main sustainable emotions are love and anger.  Sometimes when I need to motivate myself to do something like lose weight or get a degree or some other thing, I tap into my anger and allow it to steel my resolve to be successful against an adversary, be it food, other people's judgment of me, or something else.  I channel the anger by sublimating it into action.  This can be incredibly productive.  As a matter of fact, I am almost unstoppable when I set my mind to something.  I dropped out of high school and yet graduated from college in three years with a 3.8 working full time.  I can be incredibly driven.  However, this kind of motivation can not be sustained forever.  Eventually I always burn out.  In college it took three years of undergraduate work and two more years of graduate work but eventually there was nothing left and I barely pushed myself past the finish line.  I was exhausted. It has been the same for my weight loss attempts, on multiple occasions I have lost over 80 lbs. and even kept it off for a maximum of six years, but eventually my motivation to continue to fight wears out and I regained the weight. 

This time I want to try something different.  Rather than being motivated by anger, I want to try motivating myself with love.  I want to learn to love my new body, my new attitude, my new freedom.  I want to nourish myself with kindness and compassion.  I want to choose to eat well not just to prove that I can do it, but because it is the loving thing to do.  I want to practice gratitude toward my body rather than punishing myself for the neglect I put myself through.  I want it to become an almost spiritual experience.  This is a totally new way of thinking for me and one that will require me to come up with a new and improved plan.  I am not yet sure what it will be, but I am thinking and journaling about it.  What would it look like if I truly treated my body with loving compassion?  I don't know, I have never tried that. 

Elina, I think you are on to something!!  I think this is a great idea!  And I will tell you, for what it's worth, that before my surgery the ONLY times I was ever successful at losing weight were the times I got into a mental attitude of "I love myself" and "I love my body" BEFORE and DURING the weight loss.  Try as I might, I could never hate myself thin!  ;)

Lee often talks about this, treating herself with compassion, enjoying her new body and its increased freedom of movement, and motivating herself with self love, rather than, self-hatred or anger. It is certainly a journey and this a healthier way to approach it. I think Lee learned a lot of this during her years with OA.

One day I told my PCP about weighing and measuring my food and journaling, and that it was a lot of work at times, but it helped me to be successful. He said that it was a "labor of love." I often think about that, when I am journaling my food intake and measuring my food. Reframing the healthy behaviors as self-love definitely puts things into a more positive place and I don't mind doing them at all. Even exercise, as difficult as it was to develop this habit, I thrive on it, and relish the changes in my body (even with the saggy skin) and increased strength and endurance. I am finding new ways to put more movement into my life, since I have a relatively sedentary job, and find that it is another way to nourish and care for myself.

This is a great topic and a positive one for all of us to focus on.

Gail

Elina this is a great perspective. We all spent years -even most of our lives- hating out bodies which is pretty close to hating ourselves. Learning to approach out bodies with kindness is a part of treating our whole self this way.  And if we are good to our bodies with proper nutrition and care, it will pay us back with gratitude.  Journaling sounds like a good idea.

And when I hear young women saying they hate their bodies and are in distress over it I just feel so bad for them as its such a waste of timea nd life to focus on the negative. So while we are at it in learning to respect and cherish our physical selves maybe we can pass that attitude along.

We eagerly await what you learn from this approach.

Diane

Diane, I just want to clarify, it is not that I hate my body, it is that I use the underlying emotion of anger to sublimate action.  What all that gobly gook means is that I use anger (not at my body but at society, unfairness of being fat, judgment from others, whatever I can get my hands on) to drive myself to succeed.  Often it would be something like anger at my inability to control a situation.  Basically, I would push to prove someone wrong.  This can be incredibly motivating but exhausting in the long run.  I think I am going to use the warm Spring weather to help me with this.  On nice days, I am going to go for a walk in a nearby woods and contemplate this more.  I think this would look very different for everybody.  For some it is eating more veggies, for others it might include yoga or other meditative exercises, I am not yet sure what it will mean for me.  I am starting by taking a moment before every meal to say a silent thanks for the clean and bountiful food in front of me, and by practicing intentional slow eating.  I am going to really try to taste each bite and experience all the amazing flavors while thinking about the miracle of how this food came to be on my plate.  Basically this is an exercise in gratitude.  I am going to do this for one week and see how I feel about it. 

Basically this is an exercise in gratitude. 

Elina, I love this. And I have a bunch of thoughts but they're jumbled and not coming out in a cohesive way yet. This might be an interesting topic for our next conference call..

Lizanne

yep, i see your point. I was just thinking how much time and energy many of us wasted in the past hating our bodies in the past and how pointless it all was. So treating one's body with love and approaching its care with respect and a cherishing attitude is a concept that is not only good for us post -wls people but for anyone. You are right about anger being highly motivating and many things get accomplished when fueled by anger and some of them good and some not so good but ultimately it does burn you out.  I went through a big business mess one time and my anger about what others did really helped me power through it and ultimately triumph over some bad guys. But it did burn me up though I am now philosophical and able to see the long term good it did me (like being able to retire at age 50). 

So I look forward to your posts on this subject and will begin contemplating it myself. Maybe a good exercise is when one is temped to eat an unhealthy food, ask yourself if this is an act of love toward your body or an effort to calm some other negative emotion.

So very interesting.    Diane

 I love this Elina.  We all need that "Attitude of Gratitude".  I too have lost and regained many times.  But one thing I always tried to do while losing was to be truly thankful for every morsel.  I think when we lose that perspective and just eat because it's there, it really causes us to eat out of control.  In all things, give thanks.  We are truly blessed.

I am VERY much for this and just this morning I was putting my hand on my Area of Maximum Pooch and saying nice things. I'm not kidding - it's the opposite of hating a part of you. and it makes a lot more sense.

I had a dream last night that helped me clarify my own thought on this issue and I thought I would share my conclusions with you.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with sublimating anger or any other "strong negative" emotion.  As a matter of fact many works of art, great accomplishments, and success stories are build on this sublimation process.  If we have an emotionally healthy enough childhood, we learn to take these negative emotions that we all have and sublimate them into action.  It is similar to the workings of our metabolism, we put fuel in and get energy out.  Here we put emotions in and get action out.  But just as the type of food put into our metabolism effects the output, so too does the type of emotion, input, we put into the sublimation process effects the output or our motivation to act.  For example, when we put in fear, we often get choppy short lived motivation to get out of a situation or to fight.  Anger seems to provide fuel for longer sustained motivation that can be very focused and goal driven.  Love on the other hand does not go through this process.  It is not sublimated, but used whole.  For this reason it does not require greater mental energy to transform it and it doesn't not drain us.  We feel empowered without feeling exhausted.  Many of the world religions and spiritual paths use this amazing power to strengthen us.  It is possible the core of almost every major faith.  I am going to do a little research into how others have cultivated and used love, compassion and gratitude to find and keep motivation.