Myths of Life – Identifying and Removing the Myth of Limitation

Weight Loss is cited as a key goal by huge numbers of individuals in the developed world.  It seems ludicrous that, despite more opportunities to create lifestyles of satisfaction and abundance, many people, (a large number of them women) are stuck in trying to reduce their appetites and waist lines – even resorting to weight loss pills.  What are the myths surrounding weight loss?  Isn’t it strange that people who focus on weight loss, calorie recution or diets, are the ones who lose and gain weight in a yo-yo cycle? Those who have a healthy relationship with their bodies, listen to their appetites and need for nourishment in ways beyond food alone, are those who more easily create more balance in all areas of their lives, including their weight.

Start asking diffferent questions about what your appetite means and you will find different answers.  What if it was a myth that calorie input and energy output tradoffs are the only contributing factors to maintaining a healthy weight and ralationship with your body?  A more holistic approach to understanding our bodies might throw light on this intimate connection between nourishing our bodies, minds and souls – and we will see results in living more satisfying lives.

Moving to another country, region, organisation or family often arouses strong feelings of separation and a sense of being an outsider.  Regardless of the open-ness and how we experience the so-called ‘Inside Group’,  the experience of belonging or not belonging is a highly existential experience and one not easily understood by theories of emigration or change.  But what does it mean to belong or not, to feel accepted or an outsider?

There are huge individual differences in reponses to change and emigration particularly brrngs up powerful responses of existential otherness which the sufferer often has not anticipated.  Enormous feelings of nostalgia or seeking similarities arises, with criticism or judgement often levelled at the host country.  The latter of course may be a projection of our anxiety and an attempt to make sense of the feelings of alienation and the unfixed nature of ourselves and the worlds which we inhabit.

Existential concepts are valuable in understanding every day happenings and provide a different way of interpreting the sometimes bizarre or unexpected behaviour of others.  For example, imagine a situation where you confide in a friend.  For example, you explain that you and your partner have parted ways.  You are surprised by their lack of empathy for your situation and consider them selfish as they turn the conversation around to themselves.  Surprised, you struggle to understand how this person can ignore your plight and focus on what ‘your break’ means to them.   Are they selfish, have you misunderstood the reality of your relationship with them or are the responses more existential in nature?

If you consider the friend’s responses as indicative of a different worldview, it can be a refreshing and insightful way to consider the sitaution – which is existential in nature.  What if, the friend believed that relationships should last forever and that  people should stay together regardless of their differences and work through their problems? What if your changed circumstances challenge their beliefs that separation is even possible and that the world is certain?  Instead of the issue being one of her being unable to offer you support, it becomes one of crisis for the friend, since she is challenged in her beliefs about what is possible.  The world has suddenly become unpredictable and unfixed – unlike her fixed view of what the world should be like.

The changed circumstances reflect to her the uncertainty of life and the ineffectiveness of fixed models of the world.  She, like us all, have to come face to the face with the co-created nature of our unfixed phenomenal existence.