What You Do Next

This happens to almost everyone.

You start out fired up.
Clear.
Motivated.
Certain this time is different.

And for a while, it is.

Then life happens.

You eat more than you meant to.
You stop planning.
You grab takeaway.
You find yourself eating things you’d sworn off.

You step on the scales.
The number’s gone up.
It feels like you’re back where you started.

And right here — this moment — is where things usually turn.

Not because of what you ate.
Not because of the number.
But because of what comes next in your head.

For most people, that’s when the commentary starts.

How could I be so stupid?
What’s wrong with me?
I can’t be trusted.
I need more discipline.
I always mess this up.

And suddenly the problem isn’t food.
It’s shame.

Notice something subtle here.

What you did didn’t create how you feel.
Your thinking about what you did did.

Until thought gets involved, it’s just behaviour.
Food eaten.
Plans dropped.
A number on a scale.

Meaning only shows up afterwards.

Judgement feels convincing because it sounds responsible.
Like it’s keeping you in line.
But it doesn’t.

Judgement tightens the mind.
And when the mind tightens, common sense disappears.

You don’t access wisdom from a place of self-attack.
That’s not how we’re wired.

What’s actually going on is simpler than it looks.

In the moment you overate or ordered takeaway or gave in to a craving, a thought showed up.
That thought created a feeling.
From that feeling, an action made sense.

That’s it.

It doesn’t mean anything about you.
It doesn’t say anything about your character or your future.
It just tells you what your state of mind was doing at the time.

Nobody is immune from this.
Nobody.

The only thing that determines whether it turns into a downward spiral is what you do after.

If you pile judgement on top, the spiral continues.
If you don’t, it usually doesn’t.

You don’t need to analyse it.
You don’t need to punish yourself.
You don’t even need to “fix” anything.

Just notice what happened — without turning on yourself.

From there, the next step tends to appear on its own.
Often quieter.
Often more sensible.
Often easier than you expect.

That’s the part that actually moves things forward…
What you do next, once the noise dies down.

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