Artwork by Debbie Rhodes
I recently watched a comedy show featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld. He was talking about how it feels to be 65 years old. To some people that may seem ancient, depressing -something we cannot picture ourselves being.
The truth is, we will all be 65 some day. I only have a few years to go and it still seems a little daunting. But Seinfeld talked about the pros of being 65. He said he no longer felt guilty for saying ‘no’ when someone asks him to do something. And he doesn’t feel the need to improve himself anymore.
I found this interesting because here he was at 65 years old, doing stand up comedy on a stage to make people laugh and making money while doing it. A lot of work went into the show. He had to write the dialogue, rehearse, schedule the theater, etc.
Doing the show was, in fact, a major act of self improvement financially and maybe even emotionally since he proved he still had the gift of making people laugh. But the fact that he perceived he didn’t need to improve himself was significant.
This means you can stop trying to improve yourself or your situation and still be productive and accomplish something.
Almost everyone I know wants to improve their life, financially, emotionally or physically. But they all go about it in different ways.
For someone who struggles with overeating or bingeing, improvement seems hard to come by. They can go day after day trying to not overeat or binge but at the end of the day, saying the same thing. “Why do I do this to myself?’
The reason they keep doing it is because they think the answer lies in a fault within themselves. This is not true. The reason we binge is because we try so hard to not binge that our body perceives this as a possible future food shortage. It then overrides our desire to not eat by making us want to eat everything in site right now. It’s a life saving act by our body and a very normal response to dieting and restricting food.
At some point we need to tell ourselves things are going pretty well, that we are going to be OK. Accept ourselves the way we are. Even find something we like about ourselves, concentrating on our strengths instead of weaknesses.
By doing this we might find that the ultimate act of self improvement may be to stop trying so hard to improve ourselves. And we can choose to do this at any age. We don’t have to wait until we are 65.
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