Why am I Sharing My Weight Loss Journey?
Choose actions that call you to be in integrity with your commitments and your purpose...
Are your actions calling you to be in integrity with your commitments and your purpose?
I recently started to post my writing publicly here on my Substack and post videos of my experience with weight-loss on Instagram (@matthew.e.maes).
I can tell you when I first started to do this I was scared shitless. I was not scared because people I don't know would see my videos or read my writing; I was scared because the people I know would see them. My family, my friends from high school, my friends from college, people I served with in the military would see a side of me I had not shown them.
Showing the people in my life who have only known the wounded version of me, the version of me that spent my whole life trying to get their approval, validation, and love, this side of me scared the shit out me - It scared me because there is the potential for them to reject this version of me that I am showing them.
Right after I hit the submit button on Instagram I shared my fear with my wife. She said, "don't you always tell me if you're afraid of something it's the right thing to do?"...
It was exactly what I needed to hear - fear is an indicator of the direction we need to go. It's pointing us to our purpose, which is on the other side of the wounds we must heal...
The other thing that scared me about posting my writing and videos about my weight-loss journey publicly was a fear of fucking it up.
What if I gain all the weight back?
As soon as I had this thought I knew with out a doubt that I had to move forward with sharing my journey because if I share my journey and I am not continuing to do what I need to do to be healthy then I am out of integrity with my word...
This shifted the why of sharing my journey to become an action that called me to be in integrity with my commitments.
Hitting submit on my Instagram video and sharing a link to my post on Substack about being disciplined altered the trajectory of my week. I knew without out a doubt I was going to get up and go to the gym; That I was going to hit my fasts and do my breath-work. All the noise of the excuses of why it would be okay to skip today were just that, noise, they lost their pull on me.
*note I didn't just push the noise away either, I honored it and listened to what that part had to say; I gave that part of me what it needed to feel safe.
Finally, if posting my writing and sharing videos of my journey on Substack and Instagram inspires just one person, including myself, then I am living my purpose.
Sharing my writing and videos is an action that calls me to be in integrity with my purpose…
I'll close with this quote by Brianna West which sums everything up beautifully ~ a quote that really moved me deeply this week.
“Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.
It doesn’t matter.
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side.
You’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward.
Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved.
Instead of being understood, you’re going to be seen.
All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are.” — Brianna West