The Insight That Shifted It All

In this episode, I talk about the simple understanding that helped me shift out of years of binge eating, bulimia, depression, and anxiety. That insight was: I am not my thoughts.

You are not your thoughts. It's simple, but have you really ever explored how deep that rabbit hole goes?

Transcript

Hello,

Insight Timer.

My name is Becca L.

I am so excited to be here on this app.

I'm a life coach with years of experience helping people overcome unwanted habits and anxiety,

Particularly in the area of food habits and body image.

And my coaching practice was a result of my own decade-long struggle with phases of binge eating disorder and bulimia,

As well as depression and anxiety.

And it is now my privilege and honor to share what I've learned with others and just watch them as they glide out of their own mental prisons.

What a great thing to do,

Right?

To leave the thought world that you thought was so real,

That was just keeping you enclosed and small and trapped and doubtful and scared and getting to just emerge into this mystery,

This amazing,

Connected,

Source-driven,

Magical wonderland that is life.

So cool,

Right?

So that's what we're gonna be doing here on my little Insight Timer channel.

I don't know if we want to call it that,

But that's what I'm gonna call it.

So I thought I would start by just telling you a little bit about me,

Just to,

I don't know,

We can get to know each other a little bit better.

So I studied electrical engineering and worked as an electrical engineer for just under eight years.

That was kind of my chosen career until I decided to quit.

So I'm also a trained dancer and choreographer,

And I left my engineering job a couple years ago so that I could move to LA to pursue creative passions while I was coaching.

So at the time I was coaching on the side and then decided to just do that and dance and choreograph.

And I'm also a certified yoga teacher,

Although I don't really teach yoga regularly,

But maybe that will change.

I'm a certified change coach and certified dharma coach.

So I'm basically just interested in anything in this healing realm.

That is my passion.

What else about me?

I have two adorable cats.

You might hear them from time to time.

They like to insert themselves into conversations and it's always adorable.

So if you hear a squeak or you hear something that sounds like glass breaking,

That is probably my cats.

Although I've been known to break a glass or two myself.

So like I said,

I'm very excited and grateful for the opportunity to be on Insight Timer.

I hope we kind of get to know each other.

I think there's a way for you to leave comments,

Talk to me,

And let's just make this a conversation.

Tell me what's up for you and I will respond through the audios.

Okay,

So I thought I would start,

Since it's my first little track on here,

I thought I would start by sharing the understanding that was shared with me at a really pivotal time in my life.

So at the time,

Like I said,

I was struggling with binge eating and bulimia.

I was basically on that yo-yo diet train.

Some of you might be familiar,

Like when you like eat really in a really restricted way and then you,

You know,

Maybe you stick with it for a while and it seems like it's going fine and then all of a sudden you just can't anymore and you want to eat everything in sight and there's all this shame and it seems like all the happy feelings that were there are now gone.

Yeah,

So that would happen to me.

I would like lose weight for a while and then I would like,

Something would happen and that phase would end and then I was on the binge eating train and then I would like gain all the weight and since my weight was so tied to my self-worth,

This looked like a really,

Really,

Really big problem to me.

And then when I,

You know,

Couldn't get myself to diet anymore,

That's when the bulimia kicked in and it was just a whole thing,

Right?

So,

Like I said,

The whole reason why I was,

Well,

The way it looks to me now is I,

My weight looked like it was tied to my self-esteem,

My confidence,

My self-worth and my safety in many complex ways.

We all know how our mind can just come up with all kinds of stories about things like that.

And so I tried what felt like everything to get out of the food hell,

From traditional therapy to medication like antidepressants,

To support groups like overeaters anonymous,

To spiritual understandings like manifestation and the law of attraction and things you might even call like witchcraft,

Yoga,

Meditation.

I tried different elimination diets to just get rid of sugar cravings.

Like I tried everything under the sun and everything that anyone suggested,

If it seemed like there might be a possibility that it would work,

I tried all these things.

And when I look back now,

I can see the wisdom in all of that.

Like I can see,

I can see like that there were things in each of those teachings that were important and are still important to me.

Or there was something about,

You know,

Learning,

Learning about myself and learning about like trusting myself and following this path and knowing that this isn't supposed to be this way,

Right?

So there was,

There was wisdom in all of it.

And I still carry a lot of those teachings with But what the key piece that was kind of missing that I hadn't truly let sink in was this idea that I'm not my thoughts.

And it sounds simple,

Like you are not your thoughts.

And I know that it's thrown around a lot this phrase.

But I wonder if you're listening to this,

If you've ever truly explored just how deep that rabbit hole goes.

So at the time,

I was working with someone named Dr.

Amy Johnson.

And through lots of one on one coaching,

I got to explore basically all of these thought patterns and,

And see kind of how they were creating it.

What I thought was my life.

I thought that they were hard and fast truths.

But really,

What I see now is that things look that way,

Because I was thinking about them that way.

It's like that quote,

When you change the way you look at things,

Things you look at change,

Like it's actually our thinking that populates this life experience with things.

And take that loosely,

You know,

But but that's really how it works.

It's always coming from the inside out.

It's never there's this circumstance happening.

And therefore I feel a certain way.

It's,

Here's what's going on inside me.

And here's what appears to be showing up in the external world as a result of that.

So I began looking into all the ways that my thinking about my weight and how I needed to lose weight was dictating my life and was affecting my life.

I thought,

For example,

That my weight meant that I couldn't be confident,

Like I couldn't feel beautiful or confident,

Unless I looked a certain way.

And by looked a certain way,

I meant being under a certain weight.

There's also this this way of or this understanding that our thinking is,

You know,

Just conditioned thought patterns that control the way that we see things.

I also began to see all the other areas of my life outside of the whole weight thing,

Where my thinking was like just keeping me in a mental prison.

Well,

My my belief in my thinking,

You might say was keeping me in a mental prison.

So for example,

I always felt like an imposter at work.

And so I thought that there must be some truth in that,

Right.

And we can always find evidence for the things that we believe.

So I was able to look around and say,

Like,

You know,

This happened.

And therefore,

That means that I'm not meant to be here or I'm not good enough.

And also thoughts about safety and where safety comes from.

I thought that my safety was tied to my ability to succeed in my engineering job so that I could keep that job and have the you know,

The comfy health insurance or whatever.

What else?

Oh,

I thought that like the the way to be lovable.

And I thought that if I if somebody was upset with me that I had done something wrong,

That I didn't people please enough that I didn't,

That I needed to figure out how to make other people happy.

Right.

Not true.

We don't have control over that and they don't have control over us.

Right.

But that's not how it looks to me.

I also thought,

You know,

That I just wasn't talented enough to pursue dance and choreography in the way that I do now.

So these were all just stories and just deeply rooted belief systems.

These things go deep.

I'm sure you know that.

But it took a lot of time to unpack all of these thought patterns.

But over time,

I really just began to see that this world that I had constructed in my mind was simply a house of cards.

And it was so fragile.

And it really could just collapse as soon as we genuinely are willing to say that is just thought.

I do not have to believe that other thought is equally available.

And I get to trust the thinking that feels good.

That feels like it's home to me.

Like I get to shift into that.

Sometimes we run off of our conditioning for a while and it feels like we have no control over it.

But as soon as we just like put that little crack in the glass and say like we're willing to see things differently,

Things do start to shift.

That is the seed that gets planted.

Everything means what we make it mean and nothing more.

There is no inherent meaning to anything in this life experience other than what we choose to believe.

Every circumstance about our life from our physical health to our job,

Our relationships,

Our financial situations,

All of these are just circumstances,

But we're used to seeing them as problems.

And we're used to seeing these problems as having a cause that is also a circumstance in the external world.

But it's really interesting to see like what if all of these things that look like problems are really just us being aligned to a frequency that isn't making it look that way.

And it simply does not have to look like a problem because outside of our thinking,

Our circumstances truly are just circumstances.

Our safety runs really deep.

We are actually inherently safe,

Peaceful,

Loved,

Resilient.

Like we have everything we need.

Anything that makes it look like otherwise is our thinking.

So anytime that we're feeling in a place that is kind of low,

Or kind of like frustrated,

Or you know,

Just anything that all that that means is it worth believing a thought that is not true.

And it can switch so quickly when we just allow ourselves to not be afraid anymore,

To not be afraid of not feeling afraid.

It shifts so fast,

And it really can,

It's available to us in any moment.

It just doesn't feel like that all the time.

And that's because of a thought that we're believing.

So I know it's a it's a bold statement.

But it's truth really does get proven to me over and over and over again.

And whenever I find myself in a in a low place,

And thinking,

Well,

This is just how it goes.

This is just,

This is just life sometimes like,

That's a thought.

That is a thought.

And it doesn't mean that we need to be hard on ourselves.

And it doesn't mean that we need to,

We don't need to zap out of it or anything like that.

We get to feel anything that wants to be felt.

But we don't have to hang out in it.

For the sake of hanging out in it.

We don't have to hang out in it because we think,

Well,

That's just how life is sometimes.

No,

That's,

That's actually not the case.

If that is,

That's just a thought,

Right?

So if you're in a place where you're going through a hard time,

And things just look kind of dark,

And maybe it looks like you're stuck,

Like I felt like I was stuck,

Or maybe,

I don't know,

I don't know,

Whatever it is,

If it's if it's,

You're going through a tough time.

I just invite you to play the what if game with me,

Like,

Just what if things aren't quite how they look?

What if the meaning that I've put behind this situation is actually just a bunch of words,

And that meaning is actually just something that I can choose?

What if we actually can just be in charge of how we see a situation?

Maybe we can't control a situation that's in front of us.

But we can put a different intention behind it.

You don't have to believe me.

But what if that is true?

What if that's a possibility?

What if five minutes from now,

Your thinking completely shifts?

And you actually feel amazing?

What if possibilities that you didn't even know,

Were possible,

Show up in your awareness?

I invite you to feel anything that's coming up as I say this,

You might be frustrated at me,

You might be angry,

You might be,

I don't know,

Maybe you already turned off the audio.

The bottom line is none of that is bad.

None,

You're not wrong for any feeling that you feel ever.

But that doesn't mean that the thoughts that we associate with those feelings are the truth of things.

So you get to just let any thought that wants to pass through any feeling that wants to pass through,

Pass through,

It does not affect your safety.

Because your safety runs deeper than this life experience.

So that's not even in question,

Your worth,

Your safety,

Those aren't even in question.

So what if you get to just let whatever feeling comes up,

Come up,

And you get to play what if,

And you get to see that no feeling no thought dictates the state of things.

And if we want to choose a better feeling way to look at something,

If we want to choose a better feeling thought that power is actually available to us.

Okay,

I'm sending you so much love and I will talk to you next time.

Bye

Reviews

Thank you 🙏🏼 your words resonated deeply. I need to listen a couple more times to take on this simple but powerful insight 🌻

Wow, thank you so much for this audio! I love how you shared your journey, the wisdom in it all, and the insight that changed everything. Looking forward to hearing more from you!