What Are You Feeding Yourself?

We've all heard it. We are what we eat.

Most of us have spent years thinking hard about what goes into our bodies. We read labels. We count things. We try one plan, then another.

And almost none of us has ever stopped to ask what we're feeding our minds.

Here's what I've come to after thirty-five years of teaching and coaching: you are consuming something every single moment. Not just at mealtimes. Right now, reading this.

Some of us have been living on criticism — our own and other people's. Some of us eat fear for breakfast. Resentment we've carried so long we've stopped noticing the weight of it. Comparison, scrolling through everyone else's highlight reel and quietly concluding we're behind.

And then we wonder why we feel so depleted.

Whether you realize it or not, you have been on a diet your entire life. The question was never whether you're on one. The question is what you've been eating.

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## Your mind is always chewing on something

I love the word chewing for this, because that's exactly what it does. Something happens at nine in the morning and we're still working it in our teeth at eleven at night.

So let me ask you the three questions I ask my clients.

**What are you feeding your mind? What are you feeding your heart? What are you feeding your soul?**

Sit with those for a second. Don't fix anything yet. Just notice.

If your thoughts were food — would they nourish you, or slowly poison you?

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## The most expensive real estate you own

There is someone living rent-free in your mind right now.

You know who. You didn't even have to think about it — a name showed up the moment you read that sentence. That's how you know.

They are not paying. They're very likely going about their day with no idea they occupy prime real estate in the most valuable property you own. You're the only one paying that mortgage, and you've been paying it in energy, in sleep, in joy you didn't get to have.

The burning coals are only hurting your hands.

I'm not going to tell you to forgive them today. Forgiveness isn't a switch, and anyone who says it is has never had to do it. It's not instant coffee. It's more like a pot on the back of the stove — you come back to it, and come back again, and one day you're startled to notice it's done.

But you can raise the rent today. Not by winning the argument. Not by getting the apology, which may never come. Just by noticing how much of your day belongs to them, and deciding, gently, to take some of it back.

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## Try this today

**Notice what you served yourself before breakfast.** What did your mind hand you in the shower, in the car, standing in line? Don't argue with it. Just catch it.

**Say one kind thing to yourself out loud.** Out loud, not in your head. It will feel ridiculous. Do it anyway.

**Then put your hand on your heart** and say quietly, I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be, and I set you free. Three times.

You do not have to mean it. You're not lying to yourself — you're pointing yourself in a direction. I've said those words for people I couldn't stand at the time. Months later I noticed the charge was gone, and I couldn't tell you which day it left.

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And if you're reading this thinking she has no idea how much I'm carrying — hear this. You are not terminally unique. Every one of us has the itty bitty shitty committee sitting between our ears, holding meetings we never scheduled, usually at three in the morning.

Thoughts are not facts. A thought is a suggestion. You get to decide whether to take it.

Comparison starves the soul. Love feeds it.

Start there. Not with a whole new life — with the next thought.

*This is the heart of what I'm writing about in my new book,* The Real Love Diet: Love Yourself Into the Life You Want. More soon.

PS. Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. All my love, Susan