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I’ve dieted off and on since 1991 and have failed every time. So, you might say I’ve
had a 100% success rate at failing to lose weight.
I was thinking about this the other day, after my last weigh in, because it really kind of
hit me at how well I’ve done so far on this program. And then I heard it.
“Yeah, but….” Those two little, innocuous words, spoken
together, have thrown down the greatest of my achievements. As I looked at my life, I
didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Because all I could think of was all the things
I started but didn’t finish. All the things I didn’t bother starting because I was afraid
to fail. Or the worst, all the things I self-sabotaged because I was terrified of succeeding.
I know, right? And with all the success I’ve had on this
plan so far with losing weight and getting healthy, there’s this part of me waiting
for the “Big Fail”. Like that part in the story where the hero does the dumbest
thing imaginable, where you think “What were you THINKING???”
Because every time I experience success, whether it be staying 100% on plan or overcoming a
nasty craving for a bacon shake, there’s this niggling fear that somehow, I’m going
to fail or self-sabotage, like before. Every time I hear myself say, “Yeah, but…”
This is a real struggle for me. It’s like sowing the good seed of my vision
in the soil of my mind. I cultivate it, and tend it, and water it and care for it and
try to protect it. And yet every time I say to myself “Yeah, but…” it’s like a
new weed pops up and begins to choke off my vision.
Because every time I say “Yeah, but…”, there follows an array of reasonable, plausible
and usable excuses to explain away my successes and my vision as temporary and that the only
constant in my life is my failure. So what do you do with that?