Category: Increasing your understanding

What’s the Downside of Daydreaming?

The interior of a limousine window, through which a crowd of paparazzi cameras can be seen.
~ Julie de Rohan ~ 27 Comments

As you elegantly step out of the limousine onto the red carpet, cheers instantly erupt from the waiting crowd. You reward them with a dazzling smile while the night sky lights up with hundreds of flashes from paparazzi cameras.

In one perfectly manicured hand you hold the new diamond-encrusted phone Apple designed especially for you. In the other, you clutch the Oscar you won the night before for Best Adapted Screenplay of your own best-selling novel (your legendary acceptance speech was both hilarious and moving, by the way).

Your phone rings. It’s Adele. What? She wants to duet with you on her new album? Well, how could you refuse? You’re not sure how you’ll squeeze it in, what with addressing the United Nations, the fitting for your new Marvel superhero costume, and collecting your Nobel Prize in Stockholm. But sure, Adele, anything for you. Suddenly, you hear a loud voice say:

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Can You Forgive Yourself?

~ Julie de Rohan ~ 38 Comments

I saw a quote the other day that stopped me in my tracks:

“When you keep criticising your kids, they don’t stop loving you, they stop loving themselves”.

Its stark simplicity hit me hard.

It’s absolutely true. If children are criticised relentlessly, they don’t start hating their parents, they start hating themselves.

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Gentle Reminder: Trust Yourself

A compass pointing to the word Trust.
~ Julie de Rohan ~ 33 Comments

Self-trust. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?

Actually, if you’ve experienced a lifetime of self-doubt, it’s more like difficult difficult lemon difficult.

It can be hard to connect to that quiet, assured, trustworthy voice within you.

But it’s there.

You may struggle to hear it, but it’s there.

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Gentle Reminder: You are Enough

~ Julie de Rohan ~ 31 Comments

If I were to ask you why you’re not enough, you’d probably say “I don’t know, it’s just what I feel”.

But a feeling isn’t truth. It’s not fact.

It’s just a feeling.

If I challenged you to give me a list of your deficits and defects, would you struggle to produce evidence?

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Expert Insight: The Purpose of Disappointment

~ Julie de Rohan ~ 23 Comments

“Although disappointment feels awful, it can provide you with a wealth of valuable information about yourself and your world. Its purpose is to keep you moving toward what’s beneficial and away from what’s going to come back and bite you. It’s meant to teach you how to make realistic, well-informed choices by recognizing the delicate balance between what you have power over and what you don’t. Examining disappointment with an open mind will help you distinguish between being foolhardy, childish or demanding, and courageous, generous and willing to take appropriate risks. In short, it’s there to help you get the good things you deserve.”

Karen R. Koenig, “The Food & Feelings Workbook”

“Examining disappointment with an open mind” is the phrase that jumps out at me in this quote. We’re often so busy trying to escape disappointment we don’t stop to think that it might have something to teach us.

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Food for Thought: Coming to Our Senses

~ Julie de Rohan ~ 22 Comments

“There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if only we can come to our senses and feel it”. – Elizabeth A. Behnke

How could someone allow themselves to put on so much weight? Why can’t they just come to their senses? This – and much worse – is often what people who are Not Thin fear others are thinking about them. To be fair, it sometimes is what people think if they’ve never had any kind of overeating issue themselves.

I know from personal experience how easy it is to put on a lot of weight without even knowing. Hard as it might be for some people to believe, it’s not difficult to put on 5 stone or more without really noticing.

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