10 Ways To GET YOUR HAPPINESS BACK, Without Chocolate!

Typically, the binge-eaters I see have lost touch with what makes them happy.  Today, I talk about why and how to develop a practice of making your own happiness more of a focus. Here, I list 10 learnable things that can make us happy.

We are more capable, more resilient, and at our best when we’re happy. So, we are more able to make better choices for ourselves.  This is the best kept secret to breaking the habit of binge-eating, overeating or comfort eating. Get your happiness back!

Your next podcast How Do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Citations
Katherine Woodward Thomas - Calling in The One
The Science Behind Why Volunteering To Help Others Makes You Happier

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. Today I'm talking about happiness, because this is something that has to be cultivated if you're going to give up comfort eating. I'm going to start with a quote from one of my much-loved clients. She said recently that she knows that there are other reasons for comfort eating other than food just tasting good and feeling good. Because she said chocolate is good, but it's not the be-all and end all. She's a girl after my own heart with a chocolate addiction. Incidentally, I've been wanting to give you an update on where I am after giving up sugar for a month last year. The truth of it is that I really don't like the taste of sugar anymore, which is unfortunate because it's a lot cheaper than the thing that I now have an addiction for. I'm now addicted to a certain kind of sugar-free chocolate. I'm not going to give you the name of that brand until they start sponsoring me, but I think they should, because it's absolutely gorgeous to me, and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to shut up about it. And so now I'm in the position of needing to wean myself off that. The thing that I'm going to talk about today is something that I I actually use. It helps me when I make time for it. There is now so much neuroscience and research that tells us that happiness relates to better health, better relationships, and more fulfillment in life. We know that we're at our best when we're happy. We're also more resilient. So of course we're also more able to resist comfort food or overeating. But this also means that we're more able to help somebody else if we're able to help ourselves. I know for the average comfort eater, that's really important. So continuing the theme of taking back control of your eating today, I'm going to be recommending that you make your own happiness more of a focus. We know that if we started to learn piano or learnt to drive, that these things would take practice. Happiness is exactly the same. If we didn't start out life knowing how to be happy or having happiness cultivated inside us, we probably don't really know how to be happy. But fortunately, there is a lot that can be done, and there's a lot of writing on this, so it can be learned. I see time and time again how this completely transforms a way of life and eating habits. Happiness leads to being able to treat ourselves well in all areas of life, so it's a really great place to start. Esther Hicks is often quoted as saying the better you feel, the more you allow. Whether you believe in the Hicks kind of spirituality or not, there is still truth in this in our psychology. You know, often the people who come to me about comfort eating think that food is the only thing that they enjoy. Pretty soon though, when we start talking, what they often realize is one, that they don't enjoy it, and two, that they've forgotten that they used to enjoy other things. As I've encouraged you to do before, you might want to keep an eye on whether you do actually enjoy your food, or whether you're in a state of rush, panic, despair, unhappiness, frustration, or maybe even hatred. Eating might be protecting you or making you feel better in some way, but I challenge whether that's actually happiness. Apparently, according to some research, only 10% of our level of happiness is determined by our situation or circumstance. That means the rest of it is down to us. Within that, apparently 50% is genetically passed down to us. But it can still be changed and worked on and practiced differently. It's all about our inner attitudes, some of which we might have learned early on, but now it's about what we choose to take forward. So today I'm gonna list a few suggested ways that you can tap into a sense of doing things just for your pleasure. If you can work on making yourself a priority, you will reap the rewards. So here's a list of things that can make us happy. As some of you know, I run a program called Calling in the One by Catherine Woodward Thomas. It's her I need to credit for many of these ideas. This is one small part of the Calling in the One process and finding love. It's also a part of learning how to stop comfort eating. The first one on my list is to go outside. Whether you're able to spend five minutes in the sun, go for a long walk on the beach, do some gardening, lie down in the grass, or just take a walk in your neighbourhood. Go out and acknowledge the day and the world. I'm going to admit something now to you that I've never actually said to anyone else. When I go out, I often thank things. So I'll thank the trees, I'll thank the flowers, I'll thank poppies, I'll even thank people. And sometimes I'll find myself thanking cars, that's a tricky one because I'm not really that keen on the sound of cars and the fast pace when I'm going for a nice relaxing walk. But if I thank them, I tap into a sense of honouring what the world offers, which is pretty phenomenal. This is something that really brings me joy. I've actually done this since I was a kid. I remember looking out the car window and saying, Look, mummy pigs! Hello pigs! I get the same sense of childish joy when I say hello and thank you to everything today. What happens to you when you go into nature? I know that many people who come to see me about comfort eating often feel self-conscious when they go out, so I'm hoping that you have a garden or even a window that you can acknowledge the world from. The second thing I've got on my list is also another one that comfort eaters may not like. It's move your body. Personally, I love the experience of feeling control in my body and power and strength. This is something that I miss when I'm not doing it, so I have to remember or remind myself that I like it. Funnily enough, often what the comfort eater who comes to see me says is that they used to enjoy some kind of exercise, and then when they go to the gym or repeat that same exercise later in life, they then remember how much they loved it. We have a kind of amnesia with these things, but moving your body doesn't have to mean exercise. It can just simply mean moving your hand in a gesture of openness, for example. It is true that we do get several chemical hits that make us feel better with exercise, but also just being embodied might help you to tap into your source of joy and resources. It is in your body somewhere, the joy actually lives. The third practice or habit that I have on my list is being sociable. Again, as I said last week, this is one that we may have forgotten that we enjoy. Call a friend just to catch up, pause long enough to chat with a neighbor, reach out to other people around you for a two-way exchange where you're not the only one listening. These things can change our day in an instant. I've just come back from a weekend with my best friend. I can't tell you how lovely it was to be part of her family again. And I came away thinking, I went through some kind of amnesia that made me forget how lovely this relationship is in the last couple of years. I think this must happen to us in isolation. We must forget that we enjoy certain things so that we can cope without having them. But I've got to say it's really nice to be reminded, so I'd recommend it. Who have you forgotten about? Who could you have a call with or a visit with that you felt enriched by in the past? The fourth thing on my list is to be creative. This is something that really gets overlooked, especially when we're working and we just don't seem to be able to fit it in. But it doesn't have to take a long time. You can sing a song, for example. This might only take you a minute. If you do have longer, you might make bread, you might paint a picture, you might play a musical instrument. This weekend, my friend's son taught me a little bit of origami. It was so much fun. Talking of fun, laughing is the next thing on my list. Laughing is so, so good for us. We can consciously choose to laugh or smile more often. This might take practice. I've got to be honest, if I was looking in the mirror trying to make myself laugh, I would probably feel so stupid that it would actually make me laugh. During lockdown, I remember that I had Saturday night comedy hour where I'd watch a live comedian for an hour. It definitely made me feel good, so give it a go. The sixth thing on my list, I've already partly mentioned. It's gratitude. You've probably already been told to write a gratitude list at some point, and maybe you ignored it. But it does help. It might sound like a cliche, but it does help you to cultivate your ability to be more grateful. And the more you focus on being grateful, the more it'll become just a natural thing for you. Gratitude doesn't really just have to be for the things that were nice that happened that day. You can be grateful for all kinds of things that normally wouldn't look like good things. You can get creative about this one. Like I mentioned earlier, being grateful for the things that I'm not really particularly grateful for, like the sound of traffic while I'm walking. I really tapped into what I am grateful about about cars, about being able to travel, about people in the cars, about even being annoyed so that I got to refocus my annoyance and do something different so that I'm okay. And of course, all of that made me more grateful for the fresh air and the walk that I was about to experience. This is a really helpful attitude to cultivate, because soon enough, if you're thinking this way, you're going to be seeing everything in a positive, helpful, opportunistic kind of light. And that's got to make you happy. The next thing on my list is an act of integrity. This is where you do something for the right reasons because it feels absolutely right to you. This feels really good. You get to put something right and make something fair. The feel-good factor on this one can be so rewarding, especially if you sacrificed yourself a little bit. I'm going to use my weekend as an example again. My friend asked me to go to a workshop with her. This wouldn't have been my first choice of what to do on a Saturday morning. But throughout the workshop, I got to check in with where she was and how she was benefiting from the workshop. She told me during the workshop that she was really grateful for me being there, someone who knows her, someone who's known her for a long time. I'll never really know what the internal experience was for her, but it meant so much to me to be able to provide something that I can't even comprehend. These are the kinds of little things that bond people and make me feel part of a special family, which brings me so much meaning to my life. Another thing that I have on my list is to volunteer or be altruistic. You guys might have to be careful with this one because you do probably do so much for other people already. But being a volunteer for a worthy cause is a bit like doing an act of integrity. It would probably give you some kind of meaning when you see how grateful people are and when they benefit from what you do. This can really make you feel good. I contributed to an article on this, so I'll put that in the show notes for you. There are other benefits too. There are three ways that you can give something. You can give your attention, your money, or your heart. But as I say, be careful with this one. Don't give it away so much that it makes you tired or resentful. Another thing on my list here is to learn something new just for the sake of learning it. Only if it's fun though. So pick up a book on a subject that has nothing to do with your work or what you normally read, even. See if you enjoy it. Learn the basics of a new language. Sign up for a class that's a brand new area for you. I often think that when we're mindlessly scrolling and just letting our mind wander to different things on the net, that maybe somewhere in there there's an unknown interest. An interest that we've never been able to follow. So maybe take a little note of what direction you end up going in, because there might be something fun for you in there. The last thing I've got on my list is something that I have already mentioned. It's writing what the reviewer described as a proud list. Write down what you're proud of, what you did well in each day. Try this for a week and see if it changes your attitude. One of the things that I've been doing since the beginning of January is trying to do something nice for myself every day, even if it's just something tiny. These things definitely make a difference to the whole day. But happiness is not just in doing activities. It's an attitude that peppers the whole day. My lovely little cat has just been diagnosed with cystitis. Poor little thing, she had a difficult life before she met me, and she's extremely sensitive. So she got stressed out because I went away for a couple of nights and because she's being bullied by another cat. My mission this week is to spend more time with her when she asks me to. Every now and again she'll come up to me and she'll start padding things. She'll start purring and she'll start rubbing my leg, and I'll ignore her. Because I'm working. Obviously, I can't pay much attention to her when I'm in session, but I do ignore her at other times too when my brain gets on a mission. So I'm changing the mission this week. This week my mission is to not ignore her and to allow both of us the pleasure that stroking and giving her love brings to both of us. What I've talked about today is cultivating a sense of happiness in order to overcome comfort eating. This is the list of happiness habits that I suggested. Number one, go outside. Number two, move your body. Number three, be sociable. Number four, creativity. Number five, have more fun. Number six, gratitude, number seven, an act of integrity. Number eight, volunteer or be altruistic. Number nine. Learn something new. And finally, number ten, cultivate being proud of yourself. What could you do differently this week? I'd love to hear a report of what you're thinking of trying and then how that goes. My intention is to talk about imposter syndrome next week, but I am having some technical difficulties, so I'm not sure I'm going to be able to bring you a podcast next week. And then the following week is my birthday, so I will be taking a week off. But I will be here soon, so please hold the thought. If I can help you manage how you feel and what you do in terms of comfort eating, please be in touch. The Early Bird is still open for the next Comfort Eating Recovery six-week workshop, but it won't be for long.