I started last week with 70lbs to loose. I spent a fair amount of time putting that number into perspective, soul searching even, trying to get to the bottom of WHY I insist on being prepared with a fair amount of portable padding. While I know that I will be asking that question for a long time to come, I don't see any positive purpose of "dwelling", so I have chosen not to.
I spent the week both in school, with an awesome group of students and at home with an awesome family. I walked, I skated, I wrote and I created. I even had some nostalgic moments.
An incident this week helped me see just how important learning self advocacy is. I have such an intense personality that in 46 years I have been trying to learn this lesson it has occurred in bits and pieces. I hope that those of you that know me are not rolling your eyes and committing the "bull in a china shop" to memory. This week's lesson was about choices. I was screamed at by a colleague, and regardless of how unprofessional it was, I chose to keep that on his side of the fence. I didn't react, I actually thought it was in my best interest not to react. Instead, I chose to excuse myself from the situation with a polite but poignant comment of "I do not appreciate this confrontation" and walked away. That was it, it was over, no fall out to deal with. Score one for me not embarrassing myself.
The incident came with the usual period of self-reflection. In the past few months I have been trying to understand myself and my sources of stress. I have always wanted to be a people pleaser, that comes with the need to feel loved. This is a left-over from growing up in an alcoholic home. My father could never be trusted to be himself. His affection was never predictable. My mom, while always very affectionate towards us, was over-taxed dealing with trying to protect us from the stresses imposed by my father's addictive behavior. If any of my family is reading this, I'm not airing not dirty laundry, that white elephant was discovered years ago. What I am doing now is trying to GET the damn thing off my dining room table! Now BACK to MY STORY... In my need to people please, I think I let myself take a lot of grief, I over commit myself to tasks, and I tend to not know how to react to situations and I take things way too seriously. I also tend to be a perfectionist. Things have to be done well. This causes me to be overtaxed and cranky, the reverse of a people pleaser. With this stress, I gain weight, or at the very least have trouble loosing it.
If you are reading this an worry that you have asked me to help with something and now think that maybe I have said yes, but really didn't have the time to commit to it, DON'T. For the last 3 to 4 months I have been working on my OWN ability to say NO. I realize that saying NO is a possibility. Coaching myself back into a healthy state is going to take more than a week of revelations and I have been working on preparing myself for this climb up my own personal EVEREST ever since my friend asked me about the padding. Today I can say that I think I have started my accent towards base camp.
I started this week with 70 lbs to loose... I ended it with 64. I can't wait to see what next week brings
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