The One Question to Ask Yourself Everyday
Am I operating from a place of fear or love?
This is a question that I’ve personally been leaning into quite a bit lately.
Are the decisions I’m making, the things I’m taking action on, the ways I’m flowing in my personal and professional development, are they based from a place of authenticity and care, or are they driven by seeds of doubt and scarcity?
The best part about asking yourself this question is that the answer isn’t usually black and white.
I have a feeling that you, just like me, are a lover of all things concrete, solid and for sure.
And when you ask yourself a question like this one, you open yourself up to a sense of unknowing. Of discomfort.
The gray.
Ahhh, that gray area.
The one we avoid.
The one we try to control with black and white.
The beautifully uncomfortable area that elicits curiosity and growth.
Here’s why opening yourself up to the gray area is the *best* part.
Because we're human, we're hard wired to act from a place of fear. It's a mechanism to keep us safe, out of harm's way.
But, by acknowledging and embracing what’s driving your behaviors and beliefs, your mind can slowly open to questioning and curiosity about how acting from that place of fear OR love, is actually serving you.
Not just in the here and now, but in the long term.
Accepting that some of your decisions and behaviors are and will be based out of fear, gives you the opportunity to hold space for the fear, but to move toward decisions and behaviors that are in support of, and in alignment with, operating from a place of care and concern- ultimately, a place of love.
Think about food and body based thoughts and behaviors.
Diets are fear based behaviors. Fear of weight gain, fear of alleged health problems, fear of being steeped in shame for living outside of society’s ideal.
Body checking is a fear based behavior. Fear of being judged, fear of being seen, fear of taking up space in the world.
The desire to stop binge eating can be a fear based decision. If I don’t stop binging, I won’t stop gaining weight. If I don’t stop gaining weight, I’ll never be loved.
With these examples, we can try to convince ourselves that we’re acting out of a place of love.
I diet because I love myself enough to change.
I check myself in the mirror 10,15,20 times per day because I love myself enough to make sure my body is staying the same.
I want to stop binge eating because I want to learn to love and respect my body.
But when we act from a foundational place of fear, and justify those actions with promises of love, we simply aren’t in alignment.
And we’re likely to feel like we’re stuck on a hamster wheel, on the slow road to nowhere.
If you aren’t in alignment, you aren’t going to move toward what you truly want.
Freedom. Peace. Intuition. Presence. Living life outside of food and body obsession.
Instead, you can start to acknowledge the roots of fear that are grounding you in your beliefs and behaviors.
You can hold those roots in your awareness. Allow them to inform you where you’re vulnerable, where you need healing.
And you can then make decisions that are in alignment with self-care and self-love. That will elicit true healing that extends far beyond food.
That extends to your mind and your body.
You don’t have to judge yourself for being afraid or for making fear based decisions. You can allow the fear to inform you. You can allow yourself to tend to the fear and those wounded places that are in need healing.
That is acting from a place of radical self-love.
So, I want to encourage you to ask yourself as much as you can remember…
Am I operating from a place of love or fear?
Get to know your fear. Greet it with curiosity. Tend to it.
Love it up.
I'm a body image and eating disorder therapist and coach based out of Horsham, PA. I specialize in helping women who are struggling with binge eating, dieting cycles and who want to find a sense of peace with food and their bodies.
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