Appetite for self-improvement
Freeing myself from rigid rules and external sources of motivation
Hello! This week we’re talking about motivation.
In the past, I couldn’t imagine living without the rules and guidelines I got from self-improvement books, tutorials, and trainers. I thought that without my compulsion to strive, improve, and always be better, I would become lazy and unmotivated, and would do nothing at all.
But I’ve found it’s not true. In recovery, I’m active and passionate about personal growth without the weight of rules and external pressure. I feel less obligated to change and at the same time more inspired because I’m internally rather than externally motivated.
In my eating disorder, self-improvement focused on achieving so-called perfection with my eating and exercise. I frequently set up rules like:
I can’t eat ice cream anymore.
I will never eat potato chips again.
Why do I keep craving apple fritters? I have to stop!
From now on, I will only eat whole foods.
I was highly motivated to be good and stick to the program—whichever one I was following at the time. I believed that if I did things just right, ate just right, exercised just right, and behaved just right, I would be okay. But the motivation was empty because it came from outside sources, not inside myself.
In my eating disorder, I followed all the rules. I imagined people would see me work so hard, be so good, and eat so carefully that they would admire me. I observed my body in the mirror and imagined what other people thought of it.
I read fitness books and magazines and learned as much as I could about whatever dietary restriction I was practicing at the time. The rules and programs told me to do more, eat less, and weigh as little as I possibly could.
When I went into recovery, I truly couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be intrinsically motivated to eat well and move my body. From everything I’d learned, it seemed as though I needed external sources of information, measurement, and validation to do anything.
And yet I could no longer maintain the fantasy that what I was doing was good for me or healthy. I didn’t even know what it meant to be intrinsically motivated because I had never done it! My whole life was oriented around hustling for worthiness via other people’s rules and opinions.
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